Customer experience (CX) is increasingly the true battleground in retail banking – and Emirates NBD is setting the standard in the Middle East. The UAE’s second-largest bank has undertaken a sweeping CX transformation over the past 18 months, embedding it across every level of its operations, governance, culture and technology infrastructure. The results speak for themselves.
Emirates NBD’s CX strategy is built on three interconnected pillars: customer journeys; metrics and governance; and people and culture. Its efforts have led to a 23% year-on-year reduction in complaints, a six-point rise in net promoter score from 43 to 49, and a 64% improvement in call abandonment rates – all in just one year. Today, 90% of app service interactions are handled through digital self-service channels, and Google Play ratings for the mobile app have surged from 2.7 to 4.5 stars.
“In our view, CX is not just a function – it’s a strategic umbrella that brings together metrics, technology and people to drive sustainable transformation,” says Dimitrios Gkiokas, group head of customer experience at Emirates NBD. “We didn’t just focus on digital delivery; we made structural changes in people, metrics and journeys across the entire organisation.”
At the heart of this transformation is a laser focus on improving every major customer touchpoint. Emirates NBD has digitised 163 customer journeys – from account opening and service requests to card originations and mortgage processes – with a straight-through processing rate for accounts increasing from 50% to 85%. New onboarding flows cater not only to low-risk, salaried applicants but also to more complex cases like self-employed and high-risk customers. A newly established outbound team now rescues over 2,000 abandoned applications every month.
What sets Emirates NBD apart is not just the technology, but the culture behind it
Call-centre performance has also seen dramatic improvements. After hiring 200 additional agents and re-platforming the centre with Genesys Cloud, Emirates NBD reduced average call wait times from three minutes to just 70 seconds – and to just 20 seconds for priority and Emirati customers. The new system integrates customer history across all digital and voice channels, allowing agents to respond with context and intelligence.
Emirates NBD has also advanced the use of generative AI and analytics to drive intelligent service delivery. Bots now scan the bank’s customer care inbox, categorise issues by root cause, and in some cases, resolve them instantly. Gen AI is also used to summarise customer transaction profiles and optimise internal knowledge management, saving an estimated 12,600 staff hours annually. Meanwhile, a newly developed customer health index aggregates real-time data from more than 250 touchpoints to provide a daily CX performance dashboard used across branches, ATMs, digital channels and contact centres.
What sets Emirates NBD apart is not just the technology, but the culture behind it. The bank has invested Dh80 million ($22 million) in front-line hiring, revamped onboarding and training programmes, introduced CX-focused incentives and rolled out a new behavioural campaign, We Own It, which helped to reduce application errors by around 30%.
With this holistic and well-executed transformation, Emirates NBD has not only improved customer satisfaction but redefined what excellent CX looks like in the regional banking sector.
