Monday, May 08, 2006
These days the money power of every citizen can be easily seen by the way the people move around the city with flashy debit and credit cards. The spending power of the people have increased tremendously with these plastic cards and less do people realise the amount they are spending at the time of purchase. This includes me as well. This reminds me of my uncle's statement "Money Never Comes for Free"- This was told to him by my grandfather when the credit cards were introduced in India long time back. Those were the times when ads use to show "Money for free" and less did people realise initially the hazzle of late payment fees and other issues we face. But the whole of our nation especially the metros are more tuned to these plastic cards!!!!!!
Going a step further, banks claim to have excellent customer service these days by launching Call centres. How many of us were really satisfied by these call centres services? Take for instance my example, the bank despatched credit card to my address and they had used cheap couriers and the cards never reached me. I had no option but to call the call centre folks and chase up on this issue!!!! Can I not live without a credit card?? Yes, definitely but we are so used to the perks of credit cards like petromiles, cashback, reward points etc we still use credit cards!!!! Going back to call centre, do we ever understand the pressure underwhich these folks work... my God!! i should appreciate these poor partime grads or under grads who try their best to satisfy the customers with no powers at hand!!!! I bet out of every 50 calls 20 calls will be a hazzle for them!!!!! This is a telephony call centre. But Last Week I had been to a very leading Bank in Bangalore to close one of my loans by issuing a prepayment cheque. Surrisingly the bank which claims to be nationalised has so many branches at bangalore. But to close a loan all the folks have to go to only one of its branches and entire bank customers flock here. I reached this place around 3PM with all documents hoping to be back home in an hour or so. To my surprise like a flee market there was a massive queue. Had i been a good cartoonist i would have drawn a picture very similar to R.K.Laxman's or would have written nice article like R.K.Narayanan's Swami and friends. This place was full of chaos. At the first floor couple of steel benches are laid for a crowd of 200+ and one security is handling the crowd. This security is issuing tokens so people can follow an orderly Q. Not to mention our system, everyone was trying to use their contacts to get their things done quickly...To top this the bank had kept only 3 customer care representattives who were handling right from cheque book issue to loan closure and anything under the sun which the bank can offer. So goes this bank at the first floor which is hardly 100sq.feet holding 200 odd people. In the middle of this chaos suddenly the place goes pin drop silence when an elderly people starts swearing on the bank for a late issue of cheque by more than 20 days by the bank follwed by the outburst of a nice beautful lady crying at the top of her voice and there by gaining attention of senior bank representatives.... I wonder how can this bank be called a nationalised bank !!!! I am sure other Govt Indian banks like Canara bank, Indian Bank though they might delay the service the service will be available at the promised hour.. i think all the MNC banks entering indian market have a lot to learn and have lots more to go to prove to the public!!!!!!!!!!!
