Citibank India — Atrocious Service

I have been a customer of Citibank India (Suvidha account) for well over five years. I opened the account for parking my monthly salary. At that time, I found the bank better in terms of customer service and also superior in terms of its online banking experience. Five years later though, I wonder if Citibank is a good choice for retail customers. The service has deteriorated significantly. Their relationship managers chase you to get an investment commitment out of you, and that's the only attention you will receive from the bank, unless perhaps you're on the upper end of the HNI bracket with more than a few lakhs in your account. (I wouldn't know for certain though, my balance never exceeded 10 lakhs, but I would speculate that if your relationship with them is worth a lot more, they will treat you with more respect).

I'll recite my latest experience with them here to show how bureaucratic, sloppy and unresponsive to customers' needs the bank has become. I wanted to put some money in one of their deposit products. I called up the bank to find out details about the product. I suspect the call was routed to the call center. I started the conversation saying that I am existing customer, (in the hope that I will get better response), but the lady taking the call latched on to my opening sentence and wouldn't let the conversation proceed further. She insisted that if I am an existing customer, I should talk to another department. I tried to explain that I wanted to know about the bank's products, so it didn't matter that I came in as an existing customer. The call was terminated. So here you have a truly bizarre scenario: a customer wanting to give you business is put through a bureaucratic hassle that he wouldn't have suffered if he were not a customer!! (They call this "Priority Banking Service", digest that). Of course, in the first place, it took good amount of trouble on the phone (several disconnects and call put on hold) to get through to some human being on the other side of the phone, but at the end of it all this ridiculously frustrating experience.

To me, this is symptomatic of a business that has become extremly bureaucratic by creating layers of procedural walls between them and their customers. The petty authorities you are condemned to interact with are incapable of exercising discretion in the interest of business or are perhaps not authorized to. If you want to be heard, you've got to be a privielged customer, like maybe one who carries a few lakhs of cash in his wallet and a few crores in the savings account. :-)

For the rest o[censored]s folks, it seems to me that the bank is sending the message that we don't matter. Its business will run regardless of gripes from a few o[censored]s.

Or will it? Citi group is one of the enterprises that took a hit in the recent global meltdown. Indian banks, no doubt just as equally uncaring about customer service, have actually fared better. So if you take citibank's edge in customer service away, what really is the incentive to bank with them? You're safer with an Indian bank.