Customer Experience (CX) Innovation: How e& UAE is rewiring leadership through empathy

Arabian Business

10-06-2025

Inside e& UAE's 'Beyond the Desk' programme – an executive immersion initiative that places top leaders on the frontlines, enabling them to experience customer interactions firsthand and gain a deeper understanding of frontline challenges. The programme is redefining leadership development through empathy. It's about placing leadership in the customers' shoes and viewing the service from their perspective.
e& UAE has launched 'Beyond the Desk,' an innovative Customer Experience (CX) programme that brings senior leadership into direct engagement with customers through live conversations at its Contact Centre. This initiative allows executives to listen and respond to customer concerns and experiences in real time, fostering empathy and a deeper understanding of the issues customers face though the lens of call centre advisors.
During the ' Beyond the Desk ' Immersion Day, 13 executives and senior leaders, including the CEO of e& UAE, engaged directly with customers, addressing a range of concerns from billing and subscription queries to technical issues. For customers who called e& on 1 May, their calls may have been answered by senior executives or even the CEO, who spent the day at the call centre engaging directly with callers.
By stepping beyond their desks and into real conversations with real customers, leaders gained deep insights that surpass what dashboards or reports can provide. This allowed the management to directly experience and understand the impact of their day to day decisions and set policies on e& customers firsthand. This experience inspired executives to drive meaningful change—rethinking processes, enhancing services, and reinforcing a company-wide commitment to address customer challenges with increased speed, relevance, and care.
'This programme is about leading with empathy, acting with accountability, and innovating with purpose,' said Masood M. Sharif Mahmood, CEO of e& UAE. 'It gives us the insight to act meaningfully as we innovate for our customers who trust us every day. It is our way of truly being customer-obsessed across all levels of our organisation, beginning with its leadership'.
After the immersion, leaders convened to analyse findings, pinpoint root causes, and develop actionable recommendations. These insights are being disseminated across various departments to facilitate cross-functional initiatives.
e& UAE plans to expand this programme to include middle management, product owners, and decision-makers, requiring participation in the immersion day at least once annually. 'This is just the beginning,' concluded Sharif Mahmood. 'We're building a movement where every member of our organisation owns customer-centric initiatives and acts with the customer always at heart.'
Beyond the Desk is set to deliver tangible benefits for customers, including simplified billing processes, faster technical resolutions, and tailored offerings. Each leader has taken direct learnings from the sessions and is launching targeted initiatives within their areas—efforts closely tracked to ensure lasting impact.
Programmes like these are a testament to how e& UAE continues to lead in the industry, setting a global benchmark and cementing its position as the telecommunications brand of choice.
'At e&, we believe that exceptional customer experiences are rooted in actively listening to our customers,' said Chris Lipman, Chief Customer Experience Officer, e& UAE. 'Through initiatives such as the monthly 'Customer Hour' sessions, which foster organisation-wide collaboration around customer feedback, and the 'Beyond the Desk' programme, which promotes empathy and a deeper understanding of customer challenges among e& leadership, we continue to prioritise customer satisfaction at every level.'
This customer-first approach hasn't gone unnoticed. Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) recently announced e& as the overall B2C winner of its 2025 Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The award recognises organisations that embed customer centricity across leadership, strategy, and operations to drive long-term growth, loyalty, and employee engagement.
In his commentary on the win, Forrester Principal Analyst Rusty Warner highlighted e&'s standout approach to driving customer obsession through cultural transformation and executive-level involvement. He noted that e& goes beyond traditional CX metrics, reshaping company culture by embedding empathy and responsiveness deep within the organisation.
e& was recognised specifically for its comprehensive three-year transformation initiative, which aligned its corporate strategy with the customer journey and delivered enhanced experiences across every touchpoint. Its win places it alongside Brenntag, which was honoured as the B2B winner for embedding customer obsession practices across 72 countries – including training more than 500 CX ambassadors and launching a 'war room' to eliminate systemic pain points.
'We congratulate both e& and Brenntag for winning Forrester's Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award in EMEA,' said Martin Gill, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester and host of CX Summit EMEA. 'These firms are leading examples of how to embed customer centricity into every business decision, not just in isolated customer interactions, to drive tangible business success.'
Both companies will be celebrated at CX Summit EMEA, held in London and online from 2–4 June 2025. The event brings together CX, B2C marketing, and digital leaders to exchange best practices and gain actionable insights.