ICICI Bank's customer disservice

WITH TODAY'S relentless corporate cost-cutting and disenchanted generation of younger employees, customer service is bound to take a horrible hit. ICICI Bank never seems to learn from this.

I spent a historic record of over 180 minutes, non-stop, on two mobile phones last night with a couple of ICICI Bank Wealth Management officers and with a 23-year-old technician named Julius from their iMobile phone banking application team. We had been trying to figure out what to do with an iMobile application that did not recognize my phone number and failed to download my accounts onto my gadget.

Unforgivably, for all the time and effort spent on those monstrously extended phone conversations, my issues ended unresolved. I was subjected to dropped phone calls from the iMobile team. The last conversation was disastrous, done over a phone call to a certain Azeen of the Wealth Management desk: he refused to let me talk, testing the limit of my patience, and when I volcanically exploded with an adroitly delivered “F" word, he blatantly instructed me to use professional language. As you can see, my service request over iMobile ended immobile. It was farcical misery fed by their outrageous apathy.

By then, I had already assumed that the Wealth Management hotline and the iMobile technical support were operating from call centers. I was wrong. I learned later that evening that these desks are, in fact, full-time employees of ICICI Bank. If the Wealth Management team treated me with such level of amateurism, how are non-Wealth Management customers handled on the phone?

This three-hour saga has left me with total disgust at ICICI Bank's telephonic service and utter disbelief over the bank’s amateurish tactical processes. More precariously, it left me with a gnawing mistrust of the bank's ability to handle personal banking information on phone applications. Most of all, it made me rethink ICICI Bank's commitment to trust, confidence, and service.

It's time to open an account with Axis Bank, ranked by the Business Today as the most consistent bank performer in 2013. I am confident I will be treated with an excellence that I used to enjoy from ICICI Bank during its glory days.