DEWA’s innovation team unveils new initiatives to enhance customer experience

Dubai - MENA Herald: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s (DEWA) innovation team has unveiled five new innovative initiatives that contribute to the continuous development of DEWA, enhance customers’ experience, facilitate procedures, and speed up transactions, saving time and effort, and achieving customers' happiness. This supports DEWA's willingness to support the leadership's directives to promote creativity and innovation in all aspects of life, and instil a culture of institutional innovation to elevate government work to the highest standards. This will achieve DEWA’s vision to become a sustainable innovative world-class utility.
The five initiatives include the One Step initiative, where customers can get connected to electricity and water immediately after obtaining EJARI contract from any of the 800 certified real estate companies and certified typing centres without needing to visit DEWA. This has been achieved by connecting DEWA’s system with the system of the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), saving customers’ time and effort. The 8080 initiative aims to increase the adoption of smart services to 80% in 2017, and reduce visits to customer happiness centres to 80%. Rammas is a virtual employee, using artificial intelligence to easily and quickly answer customers’ inquiries. The Move To initiative is a new service to facilitate the transfer of residential, commercial and industrial customers from one property to another within Dubai, by transferring all current account information to their new accounts and transferring the insurance, without the need to visit the DEWA’s Customer Happiness Centres. The ‘Future Centre for Customer Happiness’ initiative provides a smart centre using the latest technologies and provides the best experience for customers to promote Dubai as a smart and sustainable city.
"DEWA’s efforts in innovation support our visionary leadership’s initiatives, including the National Innovation Strategy launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make the UAE one of the most innovative countries in the world by 2021, and the Dubai Innovation Strategy, adopted by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai Future Foundation, to make Dubai the most innovative city in the world. DEWA’s Innovation team is constantly developing innovations and projects to improve customer services,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.
"DEWA provides all the opportunities to enhance and develop the knowledge and creativity of employees in a creative environment that stimulates creativity and innovation, and has raised the importance of innovation to 40% in its strategic plan. This approach adheres to its vision of being a sustainable innovative world-class utility, and the Dubai Plan 2021 to create a city of happy, creative and empowered people. DEWA prioritises customer happiness, therefore, we launch such initiatives and programmes that enhance customers’ experience, and save their time and effort. This is aligned with the Smart Dubai initiative launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world,” added Al Tayer.
The five initiatives launched by DEWA’s Innovation Team are a result of the senior management’s guidance and interest in creating sustainable solutions to improve the services offered to customers. The innovation team includes a team of experts and innovators from various sectors at DEWA, supported by innovation teams at customer happiness centres. The team worked diligently, holding several meetings and workshops, and then reviewing the proposed creative ideas. The five initiatives support DEWA’s commitment and strategic goals to promote smart services and innovation to contribute to the development of the work mechanism, and reach the highest levels of customer happiness.
The technical and administrative support teams were formed to help achieve the objectives of the Innovation Team. This resulted in numbers of sub-teams, which developed plans to improve DEWA’s main services, using innovative tools to understand and analyse the needs and expectations of customers by engaging them with questionnaires and focus groups, and analysing their response reports, in addition to reviewing the world’s best practices and such lessons learned from innovation camps and surveys on customer experience.