What do you do when your bank branch becomes a fish market, where customers grow irritable while waiting in long queues, and the staff feel stressed about handling so many queries? This was what HDFC Bank faced at its Fort branch in Mumbai’s business district, which saw average footfalls of over 3,000 customers a day. Not only was this overcrowding leading to general customer irritation, but the bank could not even ensure that its best customers (Preferred and Imperia) were served better.
The answer was better lobby management, felt the bank’s Quality Initiatives Group (QIG), which defined the problem as one of high turnaround time for customers (over five minutes of waiting for key transactions), and a very high ratio of transactions to customer base (defined as average daily transactions at the branch as a percentage of the total customer base).