My kudos to you, Mr O P Bhatt

My hearty Congratulation to you, Mr O P Bhatt, Chairman of SBI, for winning CNN-IBN’s Indian of the Year- in the Business Category for 2007. Greater than the award is you being ahead of corporate world famous giants of Ambanis, Mittal and Maalya. Your achievement in bringing the public sector to the forefront with all its constraints is really commendable. Unlike others who were vying for the title, neither u become a billioneer with this outcome nor you become a house hold name, for the common man just knows tht SBI is growing, they may not know as who is leading it to the top of the charts. But you will get the kudos for making the public sector compete with private secotrs and win over them. As you want your bank to become a global player I have a piece of advice/suggestions.

SBI may be making profits in the share market, it may be giving huge dividends to its investors, but its lagging behind whn it comes to the main motto of any bank i.e., to serve its people. I can say this for I have a personal experience to back it with. When I moved to Bangalore 2 ½ years back, I wanted to transfer two of my SBI accounts of 2 different places to Bangalore and merge thm. For this I filled all the relevant papers, handed over my 2 a/c books. After a month or so whn I enquired the status of my application I came to knw that they have misplaced my a/c books nd cud’nt trace thm. Then started my days of trauma. From thn on it became more of a ritual for me to visit the branch on every Saturday. I had to go and remind thm to do sth to rectify their mistake, thn smehw I’m not sure of, thy transferred my a/c s nd created one here, only to find tht thy created with a wrong name. Finally after rectifying even tht mistake of theirs, thy felt pity at my plight and as a remuneration thy said tht thy will provide me with an online a/c, applications of which hve just arrived at their branch and which is not offered to everyone( according to thm). Finally, I felt, its fine. Only after I opened the online a/c I found tht my name has been mispelt in my home page (according to thm it will not affect my transactions which may or may not be true). It took almost 3-4 months for all these to end. Till thn every sat, if I’m at b’lore, it became more of a custom to visit the branch once. Its all because in both of my a/cs there was considerable amount. On one of my saturday visits, two more girls were there to open an a/c, who were also visiting the branch for the past 2-3 weeks. On that fine day they got frustrated to the extent tht thy tore the application form in front of the employees and threw it in the dust bin telling tht thy don’t need an a/c.

I don’t say tht these are not happening with private banks(may or may not be). Also I don’t say its because most of the employees of SBI are elderly people. Why because my application was being handled by an youngster whose recklessness and lack of responsibility caused it. And finally it was a good old elderly person, who took the responsibility, even though its was’nt his fault and handled my case. So, Sir, I feel even though the quality of the product which you sell is good, its only the service you offer to public will help you in the long run. This post for sure is not to defame your organization but just to help it in becoming more successful in all fronts.

Congrates once again Sir.