I have had a good relationship with hdfc for the past few years. I have a veritable committment with them – it is because of them I own my home. And it is because of this home, I have a relatively long term commitment with them (for a few more than 10 years). They have a pretty impressive and transparent online system, where you can check your PDC (post-dated cheques), your payment schedule – you can even print your yearly schedule for tax declaration purposes yourself. In all, I like them.
Until last week — when I used their online customer service query form to ask a question regarding tenure reduction etc. I got back a pretty cryptic reply by gmail. I understand how these things work — call centers do not have the ultimate experts — so I did not get perturbed. I collated that information, and reformated it, and mailed back, stating my understanding, and asking them to confirm if my understanding was correct.
Now, hold your breath. I got back a reply with 4 characters.
S Sir.
This was all was there in the email. It took me a bit to realize that it meant “yes sir” in the first place. Wow, that blew the high reputation that the bank had in my books.
Companies like HDFC – please note — it takes only one person like this, to ruin your reputation that you have built so hard, and try so hard to keep up. Choose your call centers and your call-center employees carefully. Or atleast, train them properly.