ICICI Bank Ad – so close to reality yet so far

Recently, while stumbling channels on my TV set I came across the ads about ICICI Bank. And when I saw them, I had to say WTF!!! How can they air this? No no, nothing offensive about the ads, they are pretty much decent. Its just they are so far from reality.

There is this one ad that shows an old lady (ICICI Customer) who is waiting to perform a task and this ICICI Bank representative goes over to her and tries to help her out. Now, while helping her out, both of them end up chatting and chatting for so long that they continue even after office hours.

The ad looks awesome and personifies that how customer friendly ICICI Bank is. But only in the ad. When you enter an ICICI Bank branch, you would generally encounter loads of people since the bank does have a huge customer base. Nothing wrong with that again. But whats wrong is the break up of the x number of counters in the branch

• half would be empty as there is no customer representative sitting over there (This is common across many branches regardless of the time of the day, day of the week or load during the day). I always wonder why they have counters if they do not have people to sit behind them.
• 1 counter would be for senior citizens (I totally agree with this as there should always be one counter available for senior citizens)
• 1 would be for customer queries (again in agreement as customer queries require immediate attention)
• 1 would be for Personal Banker to whom not everybody has access. Since this representative is for people who meet certain criteria.
• That leaves only 1 counter for general public who comes in for day to day operations and many a times its coupled with customer queries counter.

When you’ll ask some representative why other counters are closed – the reply would be ‘Sir, even we want to have lunch too’ in a very rude tone.

Now, first of all you are a Private Bank and your USP (supposedly) is customer service. If we want bank representatives to talk to us rudely, we do have Public Sector Banks like Syndicate Bank (where they will literally shout at you).

Secondly, customers never say that you do not have lunch. But 1/2 of the counters empty? Why open your bank from 8-8 if you cannot support it. If the bank cannot handle load at lunch time, they should probably close the branch for 1 hour at lunch time. Their employees can have lunch at leisure and people will not come to the bank at that time. If the bank is open at a particular time and customers are inside, you have to serve them. Whats the fuss about it then?

Now compare this to HDFC Bank (another private bank) and government banks – they always have manned counters. I have never seen counters at HDFC empty and they are very well managed. There are never huge queues and the processing is at a pretty good speed. And I have never encountered an HDFC representative talking in a rude tone..

And government banks – they too always have manned counters. Their counters are empty only when someone is on a leave. And then you are stuck coz there won’t be a back up. For eg: I was at Syndicate Bank and wanted an ATM card issued to me. Problem, the guy who issues it was on a week long leave and so I would have to wait for 1 entire week before the process can even start. God knows when it would have ended so I decided against it. And they definitely are rude while talking. They talk as if they own the bank.

Lets talk about websites now. Government banks – never tried. HDFC Bank – very sound and pretty fast. Barely encountered a bug ever. ICICI Bank – too damn slow and very buggy.

Call Center Numbers: Government banks – again never tried. HDFC Bank – again pretty fast and you usually get your solution pretty quickly. ICICI Bank – You would be really lucky to reach a person. And then you will get an answer as ‘Sir, the back office is not yet updated with the details’ or it would take forever for them to fetch the details and you’ll end up losing your patience and banging the phone.

I do not even want to go to each bank’s policies since they are very much driven by RBI norms and usually all private banks have similar ones with slight variations in monetary values.

Whom do you want to bank with? – take your pick.