Customer wait time down to 3 minutes: SBI

Bank also focusing on encouraging customers to use technology tools

State Bank of India (SBI) chief general manager CR Sasi Kumar today said their ongoing effort to achieve customer service excellence was yielding results.

“We were able to cut down the wait time for a customer to below 3 minutes in branches where the customer service excellence programme is being implemented,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of vehicle finance to Ola Cabs.

In addition to improving the speed of service delivery in 40-odd branches, the bank is also focusing on encouraging customers to use technology tools provided by it rather than visit the brick and mortar branches.

According to Sasi Kumar, SBI has witnessed just 2 per cent growth in SME lending in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh owing to a downturn in business. Agriculture advances saw a negative growth, particularly in Andhra Pradesh where there were fewer loan renewals owing to the debt waiver scheme, according to him.

Of the advances made in AP and Telangana, the bank has an NPA level of 10 per cent in agriculture loans, 7 per cent in SME loans and just 1 per cent in the retail loan portfolio, he said.

Across Telangana and AP, it has a deposit base of Rs 72,000 -crore along with advances of around Rs 62,000 crore while the overall credit growth during 2014-15 stood at around 12 per cent.