Friday 6 March 2015

ICICI Bank Needs to Fix it's Innovation Engine

Fast paced innovation is unheard of in the conventional banking domain. Yet, ICICI is an outlier in the banking and payment innovation space. It has been a front runner in Social Payments innovations as well.

ICICI had launched it's Facebook enabled social saving products, iWish, where friends can pitch in some money to help you meet a goal faster. This was more than one year before RBI issued Social Commerce guidelines in Nov 2014.

Earlier it had a launched card-less ATM money withdrawal.

Recently, it paced up it's innovations in order to compete with it's peers and smaller banks. Here is when I started facing #CX , Customer Experience, issues.

First it's IMPS integration with National USSD Gateway, accessible from any mobile operator through, *99#, was flawed and could never get it to work even after escalating to my Relationship Manager of Privileged Banking Account.

Then, it launched it's Mobile Banking, I could not get it to work on any of my 5 Android devices, including 2 tablets and 3 phones of various versions. It's TOTP (Timed One Time Password) App also did not work.

Recently it launched Twitter Money Transfer, I was very excited, and tried to transfer a small amount; but I could not get the convoluted process to work, even after multiple SR (Service Request) and calling up my relationship manager multiple times I gave up.

Finally, last week, it was the last straw on the camel's back, (Camel being the metaphor of the brand image here), it launched the Mobile Money Transfer App, called "Pockets". I tried it out and after lot of struggle I gave up on it as well.

So, I conclude that while fast paced innovation in banking and payments market place is necessary for maintaining it's leadership, it should re-look into it's innovation process itself. It must avoid flops by rigorously testing the apps and social integrations before bringing and advertising it aggressively.  
As for me, I am moving away from ICICI bank, and have moved my e-commerce transactions to HDFC bank. Opened a Kotak Bank account for moving out of this messy apps.

 #CX, #CXGotcha, #PAYMENTS

https://twitter.com/innomon/status/573033436698435584

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