du University, launched earlier this year, is set to inaugurate its latest addition to hone the talents of employees and drive customer satisfaction levels higher. The Retail Sales and Service Academy and the Enterprise Sales Academy, launched in August, aim to provide the relevant training and development to du employees aligned with evolving customer expectations.

Speaking about the planned training, Ibrahim Nassir, Chief Human Capital and Administration Officer, du said, "Our aim is to facilitate a transformation by changing mind-sets and creating a ubiquitous culture of service. With the Retail Sales and Service Academy we are providing the relevant tools and fostering an environment that enables our staff to directly impact customer experience across the various touch points, online, through our call centre, and face-to-face at du retail stores and outlets. As an Emirati business, our aim is to set the benchmark for all other organisations within the UAE when it comes to training and development of staff to consistently improve the customer experience."

du is collaborating with experts from Vodafone, so that it can deliver global best practice customer service training through its Retail Sales and Service Academy.

Always looking to improve its customer service models, du introduced in-store video retail support last year, allowing walk-in customers to interact with service agents through a video conferencing system. In an ongoing effort to engage customers and meet their changing needs, du will continue to update its retail experience across store locations around the region.

These updates will eventually encompass all of du's customer interactions, at its online shop, social media channels, as well as face-to-face. In line with this initiative, du offers staff that engage directly with the customer the opportunity to become more than just sales representatives, and to act as trusted advisors - consulting subscribers about offers, services, promotions and deals best suited to them. All du retail store staff in both own and franchisee operated stores will be enrolled in the Academy to ensure a uniform customer experience across all retail touch points.

The du Retail Sales and Service Academy and du's Enterprise Sales Academy offer training programmes that teach enterprise sales staff to diversify from product based to solution based sales. Staff are being trained also to understand both customer needs and retention in the enterprise segment. All Enterprise Business staff including Directors and Account Managers will go through the training programs as a part of their role requirements towards building the du way of sales and service.