I walked into the Jayanagar branch of ICICI Bank and was greeted by a wall-mounted primitive-artificial-intelligence-capable monolith device. This device has 15 buttons in total; 6 rows with 2 buttons each and 1 row with 3 buttons, all with textual inscriptions in a tiny-sized font.
As a customer, you are required to press a sequence of two buttons corresponding to the task you want to accomplish after which out comes a piece of paper with a cryptic token number. If you want to accomplish multiple tasks, you have to repeat the above sequence for every task, thereby ending up with multiple cryptic token numbers.
If you’re encountering this device for the first time, you’re guaranteed to be bewildered. There are so many choices to read and select. Before you can scream out “WTF mate!” you discover that one guy has been employed just to help you press the correct buttons. Heights of [un]employment!
When your token gets picked for service (as displayed by a wall-mounted beeping monitor) depends on your karma. As one customer found out, though he came in at 08:29 AM his token was not picked even at 10:00 AM! I got my token at 09:47 AM, hung around till 10:15 AM, and then walked out. All I wanted to do was close a savings account. And good luck to you if you have multiple tokens!
Reminds me of that ICICI Bank advertisement “Hum Hain Naa?” (We are there for you right?)
My response: Isliye? (For this?)
On the other hand, ICICI Bank’s raising truckloads of money. For what? What do you think?
Lame Service: ICICI Bank — If You Make The Customer Wait Long Enough They Will Leave; For Good
Older post: Bad Jargon: A Lesson On How To Evade Answering Simple And Direct Questions
Newer post: Tweets on 2007-10-09
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Anoop 10.08.07 at 12:02 pm
Whoa!!…from past few days and blogs of urs show that its only been “Lame ad Lame marketting Lame etc etc”,truth be told and after observing you through ur blogs..you have perfectly learnt the art of management..here in Singapore I work with people from UK & my manager is from UK as well, he told me that “If you err is human but to blame is management potential” haha..Suddenly it stuck me to see and applying the same to daily life(entertainment).. Football management is a blame game..haha :). You lose you blame..management is same everywhere..haha
Subramaniam 10.13.07 at 4:40 pm
Hi
I’m another exasperated customer of ICICI Bank
I’ve placed instructions, with one of the RMs at ICICI, Abu dhabi, United Arab Emirates to invest my funds into the IOIF Mutual funds of ICICI, some 20 days ago (approx ) and till date I have NOT even received the contract note !!
I am totally un clear on
(a) whether the funds were invested ?
(b) If so at what NAV etc …
In the meanwhile the Indian Market has been moving up rather fast !!
My repeated calls to the concerned RM at ICICI, Abu Dhabi have been met with polite replies like “…everything is fine..”, “…you will soon get a reply..” and so on, though NOTHING has happened ..
Do any of you know the Chief of ICICI’s international operations ?
I wish to register a complaint … or at least track my funds
Any help from the board members / blog readers would be appreciated
Regards
Subramaniam
Anonymous 08.15.08 at 12:48 pm
Dear Subramaniam,
Can you please provide the cell number of the RM’s of ICICI Abu Dhabi as I have also some queries.
Regards,
Bijit