You can bank on us!

Yesterday I went to the SBI XLRI Branch which is just down the road. I had an outstation cheque for Rs. 2000 which needed to be deposited into my bank account. This was not the first time that I had gone there to deposit a cheque so I basically knew how things worked there. Collect the pay-in slip. Fill it up in its entirety. Go to the teller. Get the pay-in slip stamped. Hand over the cheque. It was a rather simple process, not too taxing on the customer. The only variable in the whole system was the service time. The branch has only two tellers who are in charge of deposits and withdrawals. On a typical workday, the queue at any of these counters does not exceed 3. But yesterday, for some reason, both the counters had more than 10 people in queue. After filling out the pay-in slip, I went and stood in the line that was visibly shorter. And then the wait began. I was the 8th person in that queue and in the next 20 odd minutes, the teller was able to process the requests of 5 customers. He took another 20 minutes to process the next two customers because of a rather generous tea break that the teller treated himself to. Finally, after around 45 minutes spent inside the bank, my time had come. I handed over the slip and cheque to the teller. The teller looked at the cheque, read it carefully and gave it back to me. I was puzzled as to why he did what he did. I asked him what had happened and he said something that left me literally fuming. He told me that all outstation cheques needed to be deposited in a little blue box at the corner of the room. I didn't know how to react. Here I was, standing in a queue for 45 minutes, waiting for my turn. And finally when it was my turn, I was told that the last 45 minutes had been a waste. I told the teller that considering the fact that this branch existed to serve the students of XLRI and that a large proportion of the cheques would be outstation, it would make sense for the bank to put up a notice indicating the procedure. I told him how it would our time and effort and how it would improve the efficiency of the entire process. By the time I was done with my discourse, the teller had sadly moved onto the next customer.

SERVICE RATINGS

a) Reliableness: 3

b) Assurance: 3

c) Tangibles: 2

d) Responsiveness: 2

e) Empathy: 3

[1 = Poor, 2 = Fair, 3 = Good, 4 = Very good, 5 = Excellent]