Banking St Special: Everything except coffee!

MUMBAI, INDIA: If there is one chief gripe that our elder generation still harbors when we force them to get used to the mores and auto-pilot convenience of online banking era, it is that cup of tea/coffee and the not-always-about-banking conversation that they had with the branch managers in yester years, whom, by the way, they knew and were known on a first-name basis.

Yes, we live in a world where core banking, automatic billings, net transfers, ATM transactions and what not have made banking more of a casual finger-walk than all the planning, table-time and footwork it required earlier. Yet, it's hard not to wonder whether this leapfrogging evolution is making the DNA a tad impersonal along the way. It's a good time and excuse to understand the changing nuances for both customers and banks in this chat with Mridul Sharma, EVP - Head Solution Delivery, IndusInd Bank as he takes pride in steering a radical service called Video Branch that the bank has recently introduced.

What is this concept all about? Why is it really unusual or a me-first?

This is an innovative offering that enables the customers to do a video conference with the bank staff. So now they can schedule a Video call with the Branch Managers/Relationship Mangers or connect to the central Video Branch instantly. This facility will be available to all existing and new customers of IndusInd Bank.

It is indeed a first-of- its- kind initiative in the banking industry which facilitates customers to interact with the Video Branch at their own convenience either from his desktop/laptop computers or Apple and Android smart phones. The customer can schedule an exclusive appointment with a senior manager or branch manager beyond chats with video branch executives too. In fact there are no precedents to what we have offered, even in International landscape.

Ok, so IndusInd Bank, commenced operations in 1994, and as on March 31, 2014, claims 602 branches, and 1110 ATMs spread across 404 geographical locations of the country. What made you folks experiment with this first while other big names are still cautious about it? Was it easy?

Sometime size plays a big factor and may be scalability and execution parts could have been consideration issues. But now that we have done it first, we do have a competitive advantage. For us the turnaround time was about three to four weeks. We had decided that we will do this better and faster than any big player. Scale is taken care of in a good way and we see a strong highway ahead.

How's it going? It's been a few weeks already since the go-live. No latency, bandwidth, quality issues?

Overall it's a good experience, and lot of downloads are already happening. We get about 100 to 120 calls per day and some ten to 15 scheduled meetings with regional managers. We tied up with a very strong player although open source and other options were on the radar too. We have used best of our contact centre agents and have trained them on the new consoles. The underlying processes are same so not much difficulty on change and usability. It comes with a good HD quality specially on good networks. In case it faces network levels going down than only video refresh quality gets affected while audio remains equally strong.

What made you decide for a feature like this?

 

Overall, across all planning cycles in last three years, digitization has been an overarching factor for us. For the growth and scale ambitions we have, this would be the foundation of sorts and we have to utilize and apply digital assets strongly. If India stands at three per cent on smartphone penetration with an ever-rising rural penetration and a growing population getting adept at applications, there is so much potential right here, right now. Also, the challenges one had around Internet etc ten years back are no more. Plus, we had a sense that all that happening in terms of advancement is also a little faceless. Now when all people are electronically equipped and still want the convenience of not coming to the branch, why not give them a face too, on their own device? Digitization of businesses is the key focus area of the Bank in this financial year and this initiative is a step forward to the on-going Responsive Innovation theme.

Is the offering well-set?

The new facility allows customers to interact with their branches through a Video Branch app from Google Play Store and Apple App Store on their smart phones. This service enables customers to benefit the present Contact Centre services and four financial transactions - FD booking, RTGS, NEFT & funds transfer through a video chat with the Contact Centre executive instantly or arrange a video call with the branch manager/relationship manager. We are planning to offer more services, let's say FD opening etc. Features and security is something that will be constantly upgraded. We will keep expanding it beyond initial 22 locations.

Would this offering turn in revenues too?

A lot of innovation that one does today, specially customer-centric ones, is eventually going to pay in some way. But that's a by-product.