Just wonder how heart whelming it is when Mr.bhutt recieved the Indian of the year on CNN IBN for business and all those lovely reforms, vision and praise for all his team and there efforts he spoke about on that night for which he was recognised . but does that mean anythg to the average guy who visits the bank .
We have a long relationship with this bank say for more than 3 decades now. Well the modern day banking has certainly reformed the age old thoughts of these traditional bankers but then habits are hard to change overnight. I do agree you need to allow them time but then how long is the big question when the bench marks are being set by fellow competitors the countries leading banker is in pursuit and each passing day they are still lagging behind. Wait I can here all those grumblers who would say that the other private banks in there fray may foresee as customer friendly but then the operating costs to hold an ordinary savings account is high. well I guess for me I have come to a point when I would strongly say if money is going to dicatate attitude then so be it.
well this is a reflection based on what happened just a couple of months back. I suddenly felt that a group of employees who where not exposed to banking and savings and draw there salaries in cash need to be pushed into small savings and then when the thought came it was easy that I choose state bank of india as I had a long and cordial relationship with them for almost three decades now. Now that the corebanking concept had gained momentum I opted to open accounts for them in the nearest available branch near my office though mine was held elsewhere which was about 20 odd kms from my place . The opening of just a savings account for the 10 odd employees was so pain staking that I had to really push things hard and it took almost clear seven days before the applications where accepted all because the regular accountant who was supposed to be taking care of the same was on leave and someone else was on deputation and he simply felt that it was a secondary job. Now about fifteen days prior to this I was invited by the general manager of the bank for a dinner meet where in the decentralisation of small scale business enterprises was on and all the problems with regard to core banking and operations where debated in an open forum of all there clients. I still remember that the General manager was making a remark to one of the queries that Icici was charging money for certain activities when state bank dont and so on and so forth. It was one of those days where I was a contempt client that the small changes that was happening with the bank itself meant a lot to me and hence I had no comments to make as I wanted to see how all the words where being translated into action.
Hence when the time came to utilise the core banking facility i decided to try out with the bank where I had opened the account for my employees. All I did was forward a cheque for cashe withdrawal .The cheque was returned back as the cashier claimed that the signatures where not scaned and was not displaying on the monitor. I was out of the place and had my employees to collect the same and hence after making a few phone calls to the main branch I advised my men to meet the manager of the bank . But things worsened as I called up the manager to speak and requested to contact the main branch to seek clarification he felt that he was not responsible for the same and insisted that I needed to go all the way to the main branch personally to get the scaned signatures uploaded on the system. We had a row as I felt that I was not a messenger for the bank and I guess a simple phone call between the banks could be sufficient to communicate the problem and sort out the issue which apparantly the manager never liked. Henceforth when I stood by what I said he hungup and then later took the rage to my employee. He had to ask for the identity and when the guy produced it was unfortunate that the signature on the drivers licence was in english when he had signedin tamil on back of the cheque that he had presented for encashment( this basically because he had opened the new account with the all new siganture) . The agitated manager got so raged that he threw the identity on my employees face . But the person was so matured enough to understand the situation and decided to be patient and it paid the manger released the payment after some more enquiries and crosschecking the bank account and transactions we had been having with them .
Well this was the first time I realised and made me wonder how our poor people transact in the bank face the day to day hardships with all the clerks and still managed to turn out the next day inspite not knowing what they undergo is harrassment! I took a serious view of the same and sent mails to almost all the emails that was listed on there website and it was hectic week ahead when I had calls almost from mumbai to chennai different gms and dgms calling to make enquries of the incident. Ulitmately The manager had to walk in into my office to appologise and get a written letter from us that he hadassured and promised to show better attitude and service in the future.
For me looking back it does give some satisfaction but then not without pain as I feel what I wanted to do was make people realise that banking was supposed to be easy and infact for all my illiterate employees it wasnt and they go through all these hardships day in and day out even today but take it in there stride as thats the usual. Well I still wonder whether these traditional banks with a fleet of such knowledgable work force are ready for the changes and pressures of modern day banking. But then here I am not talking about the work pressure we are dealing with attitude and I sincerely feel many would agree if we needed to pay that extra buck to get the dignity so be it.
I sincerly feel the bank with such a glorious past and network including the rural sector is our pillars but then rapid changes are the order of the day and I guess with time to come the bank focuses on training there personel more on attitude and service relationship and maybe it could help them to grow from strength to strength. Business and volumes would follow pursuit if the atiitude was just right.
My third star is just because it made me realise that customer care is still working as I was surprised that there where so many calls to understand my view and all is not bad with state bank of india