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special featureCustomer Service - A Study aboutthe Present Practices and ChallengesVenkadasala Moorthy A. *"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into itIt is what the client or customer gets out of it."Says Peter Drucker one of the most influentialmanagement author."Customer service is a series of activities designedto enhance the level of customer satisfaction -that is the feeling that a product or servicehas met the customer expectation." *The above two definitions are suitable to bankingindustry which basically deals with service. Bankshave no physical products which can be distinguishedby its appearance or design. The only differentiation,indeed, is the service level commitment by employeesof the bank to their customers which develops purelyon their relationship. Customer service is a challengingissue in any service sector as it is a very difficulttask to keep pace with and meet the rising aspirationsand expectations of customers. Banks which dealwith the hard earned money of their customer's arerequired to provide not only better service butconsistently as well.Banking industry in India was considered as conventionalsector before a decade. Thanks to the computerisationand CBS (Core Banking Solution) implementation whichhas happened with the keen initiative of RBI. It hasrevolutionized and transformed the face of the bankingindustry. The change has helped the banks to offervariety of new products to their customers and presentnew avenues for accessing their accounts. It also broughtthe challenges which the industry had not faced untilthen. This paper analyses the present practice in thebanking industry in India and envisages the challengeahead of the industry.Customer Services of Banks in India - commonpracticeBy the above definition we can easily conclude thatcustomer service is not what banks offer but what thecustomer gets and how he perceives it. Below are the fewcommon practices in customer service followed acrossbanking industry in India. While some are self initiative,others are mandated by the regulators.Enquiry / May I help you counter :All the banks have an enquiry or may I help you counterin their entrance which addresses all the customer'squeries invariably. Apart from the regular customerwho does the transaction on daily basis, all others canapproach the desk. In most of the banks this counter isplaced in such a way that it looks predominantly in thebranch. The customer service officers who are placed inthe desk are trained to handle all the customer queriesand complaints. Wherever they feel that the query orcomplaint needs to be resolved by another department ofthe bank, they direct the customer to the respectivedepartment. This counter forms the primary interactionpoint with the customers as well as non-customers.Comprehensive Notice BoardRBI vide its circular DBOD. No. Leg. BC. 33 / 09.07.005 /2008-09 dated August 22, 2008 made it mandatory todisplay the various information like Service charges,terms and conditions, interest rates, time norms forvarious banking transaction and grievance redressal allin trilingual through the comprehensive notice board.Today we can see this comprehensive notice board inany bank branch. This information is one of the modes ofimparting financial education and enables the customersto take informed decision about different products and* Head - Branch Operations, The Royal Bank of Scotland N. V., Salem Branch, Tamil Nadu.36October - December 2011The Journal of Indian Institute of Banking & Finance