Thikkuvay Thandavarayan
Sometime last week, I needed to talk to ICICI PhoneBanking regarding irregular statement dispatch and other issues with respect to the credit card. Time and again it had been regular humor series novel in negotiating with ICICI PhoneBanking. There are umpty number of faulty phone banking services and I think ICICI is more competing towards staging a number one comedy show through its Phone Banking Unit. Whenever you send a feedback to ICICI either to customer.care@icicibank.com or head.servicequality@icicibank.com, the only reply you can ever expect to get is ‘Thank you for your feedback. We are always eager to raise the bars of our services to a greater level’. But in reality, the level of customer acceptance of the services seems to be always going down and the most signficant drawback is the Phone Banking Unit.
I talked to a guy and he seemed to have a Oriyan accent. Almost I could’nt make out one word of what he was telling. I really wonder how such local accent-powered guys get on to phonebanking. With CallCenter training institutes so much emphasizing on Accent Neutralisation, to favor a global communication standards, this came out indeed as a distinct shock.
Well! The caption of this post, to illustrate this, is rather a misnomer and intended to convey the drawbacks of PhoneBanking and to use a humor vehicle to carry it on a very lighter tone. The real meaning of the caption and how it befits their service standards is described below.
The Phone Banking guy actually did’nt stutter nor he seems to have any stammering weakness but the only thing is that his adamant attitude to the local language accent and his stubbornness in not making his client comfortable and he seemed to have taken resort of his accent to shoo shoo the customers away. This had been a recurring issue with ICICI PhoneBanking executives. The following are some of the standard responses that you can expect to get.
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“I am sorry I can not hear you. ” (even after you shout. This typically occurs when there is a conflict of interest which you want them to record. One type of excuse that they deploy to momentarily escape the wrath of the consumer).
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“Our systems are under routine maintanence. Please call us back after one hour”.
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“I am transferring you to another officer.” (Hold music starts). If he is transferring to another officer, who does the similar joke, then what is he then?
A friendly note: Ensure that you never call ICICI PhoneBanking over any long distance or roaming lines. You ought to spend a minimum of twenty minutes to even get a simple query answered by the Phone Banking executives.
It is high time that ICICI Bank brings some disciplince, accent neutralization, global accessibility of the staff and consumer’s money, a relative and easier degree of transparency of its processes to the consumer else I think, Reserve Bank of India should consider some moratorium on it on account of bad business practices.
Other salient features of ICICI Bank and bad business practices:
Caption Explanation In Tamil, if ‘Thikkuvay’ normally stands for unintelligible speech normally driven out of stammering or stuttering weakness. ‘Thandavarayan’ is an indicative name similar to ‘Paul or Peter’ (in English) like in the proverb “Do not rob peter to pay paul”. If you really want an English version of the caption, readers, feel free to suggest one. Put your thinking caps on. Something to start with.
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Indian English Caption: Stuttering Sivakumaran
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Western English: Stammering Samuel
The bottomline rule of the ‘Rhyme the Name’ caption contest is that it should be rhyming.
Disclaimer: The names and/or the contest is purely for entertainment purpose only. Real Tangible Physical mapping of the name to any actual physical entities or creatures is accidental or coincidental. The contest is made on good samaritan gesture to make a bit of humour, while conveying the acute financial scam by leading private sector bank.
October 12, 2006 at 11:37 am
I have been having an interesting experience this week with Citibank. As part of regular routine upgrade of silver card, one agent called me last week and he took the application form for a lifetime free Gold Card.
There has been an interesting series of incidents with respect to this card issue (and I would like to summarize the chronological series of events related to the same, as I have reported to indiaservice@citicorp.com.
1. Around September 8: Venkataramanan of Unicard Marketing, Royappetah, Chennai took the application for upgradation of my Citibank Choice Silver Card into Citibank Gold LifeTime Free. An assurance of priority delivery in four days with a verification call in a day or two was given. The verification calls failed beyond the delivery assurance, which prompted me to write to indiaservice@citicorp.com.
2. A Week Later: indiaservice@citicorp.com wrote me that the card has been upgraded (most probably in response to 1), as otherwise, in India, as per RBI stipulations, issuing card directly is not permitted). But the verification calls did’nt came through.
3. A Week Later: (Ayudha Pooja) The card and/or its whereabouts was not known. Citiphone keeps singing ‘Two working days’, ‘Three working days’ rhyme whenever a local toll call is made.
4. The Thursday after Ayudha Pooja. The card arrives but interestingly Citiphone is still unaware of Delivery Schedule and keeps singing its nursery rhyme.
5. The Saturday after Ayudha Pooja. An SMS is recieved stating that the card is being despatched. The SMS is for the delivered card. This indicates an excellent coordination between Citibank Cards and Delivery Team.
6. Tuesday (Yesterday). Another agent calls for the card. During the conversation, there was something about charge. Smelling a rat, when I confirmed Citiphone, the misconfiguration comes to limelight. Citiphone still unable to help in incorporating the necessary corrections.
7. Tuesday (Yesterday) — Call with Arun/Citiphone: The card would be billed on its expiry date embossed on the card. The previous Citiphone officer was telling charge would be levied on renewal (next year). Another girl confirmed that first monthly statement would carry the charge.
8. Today when I called Citiphone, charge is being shortly levied.
9. Three different conflicting answers from the same Citiphone Call Center (044-28522484)
November 8, 2006 at 9:27 am
Followup of the melodrama with ‘Thikkuvay Thandavarayans’
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About 30 days after the above:
I called Citibank and asked them to close the card. Transfer all balances (credit, debit or rewards) to my Platinum. That guy after his quota of rhyme singing, transfers the call to ‘Closure Department’. Closure Department takes all details.
Three days after the Platinum limit is set to the new one but interestingly, CitiPhone believes that the card was upgraded from a different GoldCard from which the card has already been upgraded stating reasons like ‘LINKING’. I think CitiPhone officers can better serve in graveyards since they do better jobs like exhuming dead bodies and treating them.
How many times a dead card would be inspected? I have initiated a further round of talks. Let us see how they solve this problem and how fast!
November 26, 2006 at 5:21 am
[…] Following an interesting development of the cancellation of a seldom used credit card, which I have described as a comment over this post, sometime two weeks back, I have called Citiphone Chennai (+914428584653 — CITIGOLD and +914428522484) and they confirmed me regarding closure of the said card and transfer of all credits, debits, rewards to my current credit card. Good. All assured and all good. […]
March 28, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Citibank people are the biggest cheats….
http://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Citibank-925004471.html
But the only question I really don’t have an answer is which Bank is really good????
Banking Experience with Bank of Baroda, Syndicate Bank, Canara Bank, State Bank of Mysore, State of Travancore, State Bank of India, was without cheating… but really bad customer care with waiting… waiting… waiting… begging…
ICICI and Citibank… Lots of cheating experiences by various methods…
This is my personal experience with all these banks.
For a Bank Customer in India… he has to choose between “sh*t” or “a pile of sh*t” customer service !!!
April 11, 2009 at 8:30 am
[…] regarding the cash credit. The Citiphone as usual was acting as a good testimony for our ‘Thikkuvay Thandavarayan‘. When I wrote to indiaservice (at) citicorp.com, I got a random reply each day whilst trying […]
February 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm
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