A visit to the Bank
By: Meena Shah
Tags: Digital Strategy, Legacy Systems, Digital Tran, Modernization, Banking

After many years I must have stepped into SBI’s branch office to close my account as it was dormant for a long time. The manager at the branch office asked me to be present in real time with my ID card to close my account.

I reached there on counter no. (11), there was a lady sitting there with piles of documents and as soon as I approached her, she said the internet is slow out here, it is so difficult to even operate. I just listened to her. She asked me a couple of questions why I wanted to close this account etc I told her my reasons and she just said sign here and submit all the cheque books and write the cheque no. here in the paper.

I did that and then she directed me to a cabin. I went inside, this cabin was full of lockers, cash counting machines and a desk full of papers and there was a lady who was constantly loading cash in the cash counting machine and tying them with a rubber band and making their piles. The manager’s desk was full of papers, I just don’t know how she operates daily with this pile.

She opened the banking system on her machine but couldn’t login for some or the other reason.

I was waiting patiently. Then she says, people think we are slow, or we purposely take time to do things but systems here are so slow that how can we be effective.

I don’t know why these 2 ladies grumbled to me and complained about their IT infrastructure and systems to me but I realised it’s their frustration of using outdated systems with low connectivity that makes them grumble and complain in front of their customers.

Her statement made me realise that, “Outdated Back office systems can really make your back office staff ineffective and demotivated even though they are in the front line for customer service delivery.”

According to a World Economic Forum report 2018 by Bain & Company, only 1% of $1.2 trillion digital transformation investments will actually achieve their set targets. We believe one of the causes is that only a few realize — everything starts from the core, the inner culture, the back office.

Back office systems upgradation are a must to improve customer service delivery and I completely understood this after my visit to SBI’s branch office.

After I came out of her cabin, I went to the same counter, where the lady who was supposed to close my account. She manually calculated the total sum which would be given to me after interest calculation to close my account. I was shocked to see that there was a manual error in her calculation. She forwarded me to the same cabin again and then the lady in this cabin realised that there was a manual calculation error.

I wondered how many such manual errors & mistakes would be happening in a day for such critical operations in a branch office. It’s just unimaginable.

Well, finally I got my money and closed my account and then the final step of passbook updation. She told me there was an auto passbook printing kiosk in the backyard, you could go there and get a passbook updated with the latest transaction. This step wouldn’t have mattered to me as I already closed my account but still I wanted to use the auto machine and see , so I went to the backyard of the branch and saw a queue for passbook printing, I joined in. While waiting in the queue, I thought it would be like one of those kiosks, which works for some as they work only in certain conditions. Same happened here; this kiosk could recognize some passbooks and couldn’t recognize some.

Again outdated kiosk. Finally I gave up the queue and left from this branch.

This entire experience made me realize for a customer like me who is digital first customer, an experience at the bank’s branch office was pathetic and outdated. This experience made me feel our banks are currently are in the mix of Paper, Legacy systems, outdated processes, paperless, Digitization, mobility. Banks would have to really transform their legacy and back office operations and systems for enhanced customer service delivery, for digital first customers.