IDBI Bank to start 'mystery shopping' exercise this year

With competition in the banking sector heating up, the feedback on customer experience, perception and expectations is becoming crucial to shaping business policies and new services.

Taking a cue from its private sector counterparts, IDBI Bank now plans to rope in a market research agency for ‘mystery shopping’. Mystery shopping, involving a mystery consumer, unknown to the establishment he visits, is a tool used to evaluate the quality of retail service or to gather specific information about products and services.

A senior IDBI Bank official said, “While the bank gets customer feedback through the grievance handling unit, we want to use another route to understand expectations, problems and even suggestion for new services or products. This is a fact-finding exercise and not a fault-finding effort”.

Mystery shoppers perform specific tasks like purchasing a product, asking questions and registering complaints. They then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences. IDBI intends to start this exercise in the current financial year. The aim is to cover 100 branches across India every quarter. The agency, which would initially be assigned for three years, would give a report every month.

“While a mystery shopping exercise is generally carried out at retail customer-centric industries, in the case of our bank, we would cover corporate finance branches as well. The direct monitoring could also throw up suggestions to start new services and to simplify various processes, the official said. IDBI Bank, earlier a development finance institution, became a commercial bank in 2003-04. Currently, its branch network comprises 841 branches and 1,141 automated teller machines. It has about 3,000 corporate clients and a retail customer base of about five million.