DFS Secretary M Nagaraju conducts surprise visits to Government Banks

As per reports, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary – M Nagaraju, visited various branches of Public Sector Banks in New Delhi to examine customer service. He visited branches last week to observe how well employees were serving customers. But as per sources, he is not happy with customer service of banks and got highly disappointed on his visit to banks.

In one major branch, he was made to wait for nearly an hour to meet the branch manager – who was on a phone call and did not know who he was. In other branches, the attitude and behavior of staff were also not up to the mark.

The purpose of these surprise inspections was to compare customer service in PSBs with that of private banks, and to see how financial inclusion schemes were being implemented. DFS officials found that PSB staff were often less courteous and less proactive in dealing with customers. The secretary has now advised banks to improve their behaviour and be more respectful and helpful to the people they serve.

Public Sector Banks are grappling with a lot of issue such as Transfers of Employees, Poor IT infrastructure, staff shortage, etc. The working style of PSU Banks and Private Banks is totally different. Private Banks focus totally on generating more and more profit whereas PSU Banks focus on public welfare. The number of customers visiting PSU Banks is much more than the number of customers visiting Private Banks. There are a lot of branches of PSU Banks where almost 200-300 customers visit per day and it’s practically impossible to provide good customer service without adequate staff. Thus, the PSU banks should not be compared with Private Banks.