Introduction

1. We studied 2 different enterprises for our project, and both were from the same
industry. We selected 2 banks for our project: - Allahabad Bank, Kashipur and at
SBI, Kashipur.
2. The study was aimed as to what could be done to improve the quality of service
delivered to the customers by these banks.
3. We also studied the difference in the attributes of services delivered by these
banks as well as the causes leading to these differences.
4. The major performance measurement criteria for a bank is customer satisfaction,
which in turn can be quantified by time to service a customer, customer waiting
time and employee eagerness to service a customer.
5. Therefore, the operations management concepts that could be used were:
a. Waiting Line Management
b. Facility Layout
c. Comparison of various service parameters in between these 2 banks.

Current Situation Analysis

Allahabad Bank
1. The area of the facility was about 1200-1250 sq.ft. It had a cabin for the
Manager, a Loan Section with 3 workstations, 2 cash deposit/withdrawal counters
and 3 workstations for customer dealing. Behind the customer dealing workstations
was a workstation for accounts manager on whom the processes of customer
dealing workstations were dependent for completion of any task. The bank had 10
full time employees apart from the Bank Manager.
Problem: -- The ambience in the banking premises were missing. There was
hardly any space for customer to wait and if 8-10 customers were inside the
banking premises the place would seem chaotic at that point of time.
2. Even on a Saturday, which is not a normal working day and with low customer
rate, Queues were frequent in front of the customer dealing section and cash
counters.
3. Anyone who had to deposit the cash was also required to take a token no. from
the counters leading to increased load on the already burdened counters.
4. It was often seen that would be more rush at one counter, even after some of the
counters being empty.
5. When we asked some questions from the bank manager about some
unnecessary processes, he was trying to defend those processes with vague
reasons. Therefore, motivation from the side of the bank manager for improvement
in processes and services was missing.
6. The average timings for completion of some processes were as follows:
Cash deposit--- 97 sec

NEFT182 sec
Passbook completion43 sec
Inter-account Transfer36 sec
KYC updation231 sec
Loan Inquiry515 sec
7. Each counter was allocated a certain process and did only that particular
process.
8. As per the bank manager, the cost of serving per customer per transaction was
Rs. 25. Therefore, a small customer who does 4-5 transactions on an average in a
month, costs Rs. 100/ per month to the bank to maintain and many such customers
were loss making.

SBI Bank
1. The premises had an area of approximately 5500 sq.ft. The premise was ambient
with everything well-planned and well-designed. There was sufficient waiting
area for the customers and even when 50-70 customers were in the premises,
the facility didnt seem chaotic.
2. There were 4 single window counters specifically for customer dealing and
processes like RTGS, Deposit of Challan, In-bank transfers, passbook completion,
etc. could be done in all of these counters.
3. Processes which took greater time were entertained at separate counters. Eg.
KYC completion, Account Opening, etc.
4. There was a CDM machine installed outside the bank to facilitate cash deposit.
5. The bank manager was cheerful and gregarious. He spoke to the customers in a
very soft voice and when we were talking to him he was very enthusiastic and
inquisitive as what we can add in terms of value to the bank.
6. The bank had a lot of automated processes, which eased the task of the tasks
and for which the customers didnt need to wait. For e.g. a customer could give
the NEFT form at the counter and could go back. On completion of NEFT, the
customer would get the details like UTR no. through a message on the cellphone,
and a time limit was set for that too.
7. The bank had a backup lease line to deal with connectivity issues.
8. There was a separate counter for customers of the non-home branch and that
counter usually had long queues with the length of queue crossing 30 at time as
per the bank manager.
9. Compared to Allahabad Bank, SBI had a much greater customer arrival rate,
which was 3.67 customers per minute.
10.The process of complaint registration and grievance resolution was well defined.
11.The time for completion of various services are as follows:
Cash deposit112 sec
NEFTN/A
KYC Updation --- 253 sec

Passbook completion28 sec

Inter-account transfer26 sec
12.The SBI branch was authorized as the main clearing center of Kashipur and
cheques of other banks and thus back-office processes were too many.
Key Indicators
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Waiting time per customer

Service time or completion time of various processes
Ambience
Customer Satisfaction
Low breakdown time, like in case of Hardware or connectivity issues.
Tools

1. Facility Layout
2. Waiting Line Management
3. Quality Management

ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION OF TOOLS