You must be extremely lucky!

“You must be extremely lucky!” – this is exactly what you are going to say after reading this post. Recently I had a few queries regarding an existing loan that I have with ICICI bank. I called up their customer care, and got to speak with one of their customer service people. She was extremely nice to me, but failed to give me the information that I needed. I have lost my loan account number, and I wanted to check the status of the loan. She asked me all my details, and finally said that she is unable to find any information regarding me. I’m completely shocked. She asked me to visit the nearby ICICI branch for the same. Now, after reading a lot of horror stories about loans, and banks, I was little worried.

I vented out my frustration by posting this on twitter.

ICICI bank.You cannot identify my personal loan account number. Very bad! Sick, running out of my vocabulary to explain how I feel about u.

Oh well, after a few days ICICI Bank’s customer care replied to me on twitter.

@rakkimk Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Please DM us your contact details & we’ll get back to you.

Now, I thought it is going to be very smooth ride till the time I get my queries answered. Waited for 4 more days for someone to get back to me as ICICI promised me on Twitter. But yeah, nobody got back to me (at this very time of writing this post as well). So, I thought let me pay a visit to the nearest bank. Visited their Jeevan Bima nagar branch. I live in Bangalore incase if you don’t know. Entered the branch which is comparatively a small branch, not sure whom to approach – haven’t visited ICICI in a long time. There came a very friendly officer with a big broad smile. That brought me some happiness, and I can still remember his smile. He was so friendly, and asked me about the visit to this branch. He forwarded me to another branch, luckily it was near – Indra Nagar branch.

In the IndiraNagar branch, I saw a few iron-faced people. It was 9:30 in the morning, and I don’t understand why you have to have that kind of a look when you see your customers. Luckily again, I wasn’t serviced by one of those people. Got the token, and waited for my turn. After 10 minutes, I can see my token number flashing, and the counter number was 11. Thank God, there was some smiley-faced lady waiting for my query. I went there, she was busy with her own work. I soon understood that her PC is not working, and she cannot connect to the network (which is obviously needed to answer my query).

I explained my query, and she said her office network is down (oh yeah, where isn’t it down when you need the most). The smartest thing she did was, she called up the customer care herself, and put me to an officer on the phone. I told her that I have tried this route, and they weren’t able to find my details, and that’s why I’m here. But, she was totally confident that probably last time I was answered by some new officer, and perhaps she didn’t know to pull up my details. WTF? Now, I waited patiently on the phone to get a new officer on the phone. He simply asked for my information, and got my queries answered. What? This was so easy to give my information? Why wasn’t I given this last time when I called? This could have saved me from hopping from one branch to another?

Whatever it is, do you think I was lucky enough? I thought I was extremely lucky enough to meet some extremely helpful folks in the bank to help you out. Most important is their smile. That’s exactly any customer would like to see first.