As I spent one hour at IOB's Mahalingapuram branch in Chennai for a 'Anywhere Banking' money transfer transaction that normally takes just 5 minutes, I pondered about the following:

• Customer Servicing: This seems an individual rather than an organisational concept in India. One guy working at the bank had the gall to tell me that he had more important work (his very words!) than attending to my transaction. He said the bank's system might hang if he tried to find out if the money transfer went through, so he would do it at 2.00 p.m in the afternoon.

  I barely controlled my anger, said it was important to know if the transfer went through as my car loan account in Delhi was due for payment today. I also demanded to know what would happen if the transfer didn't happen. He said it would go 'as usual', meaning the next working day. Brilliant, don't you think?

  Of course, it is another matter that, right after saying this, he was busy enough to spend nearly 10 minutes on a personal phone call and also discuss a property offer with a client.

  Thanks to my insistence, he reluctantly agreed to check the transfer and that's when the whole drama began that lasted one hour.

• Staff Training: At least one of the staff who was asked to do an internal posting of the transaction didn't know how to use the bank's software. Standing behind him, I watched as he brought up the same screens again and again, puzzled about how to do the posting. Anywhere Banking is one of IOB's much publicised services, so you have to wonder how well they prepare their staff for handling this service in their daily work context.
• Service Quality: The whole trouble occurred because the cashier who received my deposit entered the wrong account number in the system. Unbelievably, instead of my 5 digit account number, he had entered a 2 digit number! As a result, the transaction could not be posted for approval, could not be transferred nor could be modified.
• Banking for the common man?: As I was waiting, the bank's automated system called out a token number in English for disbursing a payment. A lady who obviously couldn't understand English, came up to me, showed her token and asked if it was her number being called out. I confimed it was. She looked literate enough, it was most likely the synthesized voice calling out in English that threw her off.

  It is incredibly easy to have the software call out the numbers in Tamil, or alternatively, in Tamil and English. But has IOB (and other banks too) ever thought about making their services more accessible to semi literate (in the language sense) people? I guess not.

The drama ended after one hour when they finally resolved the issue somehow and the transfer was made. I had decided to meet the Bank's manager and express my dissatisfaction with guy no.1 who had 'other important work', but the courteous efforts of two other bank staff who helped to solve the problem dissuaded me. They were very apologetic that I had waited so long.

But, it brings me back to my first observation about customer servicing being an individual rather than an organisational concept in India. I also realised I would be better off avoiding such transactions on Saturday and Mondays, two days that traditionally see huge crowds in banks across India.