Loan shopping lessons

Loan shopping can teach you a lot! -- (apart from the obvious rate comparisons) -- about yourself and human nature in general.

Competitive challenges have elicited many responses from nationalized banks of India.
Here you see strange initiatives under the rubric of customer service.
Things like service with a smile. Ah well, those posters on the notice board goading staff to smile cos, hey, it ain't gonna cost ya!

I walk into the zonal office of one such, and sure enough, one lady sitting right in front of the main entrance gave me a smile.
She seemed friendly too once I returned her smile -- a far cry from the iron gate and foreboding double-door I'd just passed through, reminding me of the US consulate (if you've been there for a visa) - shudder!

She guides me to the loan officer who teaches an important lesson:
A smile is just an externally visible behaviour change that is recommended in the hope that it changes your internal dispensation -
from treating the customer as a thug,
to genuinely caring for and tending to his needs.


Friendliness - a mindset and an attitude. Two people at this bank demonstrated it.
As for the loan officer, his attitude seemed to be that he was doing me a favor -- entertaining me by answering my queries! He might as well have said,
'look here son, we do you a favor so get on your knees and cry!'
(It's a good thing he didn't smile too. That would've been so insulting).



Contrast this with another bank where the loan officer was helpful and caring.
She didn't offer me a chair, nor did she smile as I recall. But her attitude was to help serve my needs as a customer.
What a pleasant and more importantly, useful interaction.

As a result the latter bank is a frontrunner for my custom,
whereas the former, well, I wouldn't patronise them to save my life!

Trend spotting: Back-Office services

The year has seen recession-hit companies sell captive business
process units. Ostensibly to shore up the balance sheet & concentrate
on their core business. Citigroup, Aviva, AIG among others and more to
come.
BPO vendors lap up these captives for inorganic expansion of service
offering, geographies & domains served and client-baskets.
Here's a fundamental problem waiting to be solved. On the one hand
there is a huge appetite for back-office (BO) - the non-core
'plumbing' in every company. Never mind the sale of captive BO units.
That only highlights the other side of the coin. One can no more
accurately predict the cycles in business & economy. Demand for BO
services may spike in good times & will certainly be restrained in the
bad.