Sir,

Private sector or public sector, the response from the middle level management is pathetic. So very early in my career at Madurai, I learnt that it is always good to complain to the top management in case of any problem.

When I was posted at the Madurai Ashok, I had gone over to Bangalore for some official work and had picked up a Vimal saree from their showroom. When we checked up the material at Madurai I realised that the saree had a hole in the corner, which I had not noticed during purchase.

I promptly wrote a letter to the Regional Manager of Vimal and asked him to help me exchange the saree at his Madurai showroom. He refused.

If one recollects, in the nineties, full page advertisements had to released with the name and address of the Directors when any company released their prospectus for any public issue of shares. As a matter of chance Reliance had released a full page ad with the name and address of the Directors including Dhirubhai Ambani. I took a chance and wrote a letter to Ambani enclosing the copies of my correspondence with his Regional Manager. The final sentence of my letter was: “As on today you have lost one Vimal customer.” Frankly, I had written the letter with no hope of any reply.

A fortnight later, I was surprised to see the apologetic Regional Manager at my doorstep with the copy of fax from Dhirubhai himself ordering him to go personally to Madurai and do the needful. This is how Dhirubhai Ambani built his empire. Every single customer was important.

The reason I am penning this old anecdote is that even presently this trick works! I have an account with a private sector bank at Mysuru. I am comfortable with computers but sometimes get lost in handling the smart phones and hence I requested the management of the local bank to help me with this so that I could also operate the mobile wallets.

In spite of many reminders, no help was forthcoming. I just browsed through the net, found out the mailing address of the Managing Director of the bank and mailed him my complaint. And lo, presto, within a week, two young men were standing outside my door to help me fix my problem! Later I did two mobile transfers too !

I am sure there must be thousands of such people who need help in downloading or operating these mobile wallets. Why don’t our banks, both private and public depute some tech-savvy staff to help their existing customers become digital- friendly? So what are you waiting for? Approach your bankers and if they do not help, now you know where to go.

– N.K.A. Ballal, Mysuru