Happy Notes

I have always been critical in the way government offices function in India. However, I have always been careful not to fall into the trap of stereotyping and being the son of a central government employee myself, have been very cognizant of the fact that there are few amongst the command’s children who do their job quite well. On my recent visit to State Bank of India’s Jayanagar branch at Bangalore, I was floored by the excellent service that I received. I am otherwise a non-client of the bank and my visit was with a specific purpose of opening a public provident fund account, which could be opened only at a SBI branch. Within a minute of entering the branch, I was greeted by a lady who took my form, asked me for some address & id proofs, asked me to paste my photo on the application form (for which she gave me a fevistick instead of asking me to go in search of the same) and then asked if I could wait for sometime. Thereafter she would call me and given the challan so that I could deposit the minimum money to activate the account. I politely asked her how much time would it take and went on to add that I was asking her the same since I had to go to pick-up my son from the school. The moment she heard that I had to go to pick-up my son from the school, she asked me to give the money that I was supposed to deposit in the account to her and proceed to pic-up my son. She told me that she would do everything needful and my account would be opened. It was some 12 noon at that time and she asked me that if I wished I could collect my passbook for the account between 2:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. It was such a relief. I thanked her profusely and she just returned the greeting with a kind smile. And it was not only her; I could see almost every employee speaking to the customers with polite eagerness to serve. By the time I left the bank, I felt like opening a savings account in the bank and become it’s regular customer.


Later in the evening we went to a showroom to prospect for a future purchase. We went primarily to check the price and variety available at the store but not with an intent to buy. By the time we walked out of the store, we had not only almost finalised our future purchase but also ended-up with an unintentional but happy purchase of some other items in the store, worth a cool two and half thousand rupees. Completely unintentional impulse buying, prompted by the excellent salesmanship of Imran, one of the sales boys in the shop. Imran was polite, very cooperative, understood our needs perfectly and was very energetic. His enthusiasm towards his job made us not only intent on buying what we were looking for from the same shop in future but also spend a few thousand bucks that we never imagined before entering the store.

Not a bad day, two good experiences and a nice feeling of satisfaction, I thought as I munched my dinner. However one thing common between the bank and the store was their excellent employees. Both prompted trust and a feeling of polite empathetic service, calling us again to their respective organizations.

Just goes to reinforce, Employees engage Customers and not the organizations. Engaged employees shall engage customers even better. The secret is no longer a secret, however while some have solved this, for many it’s still a puzzle.