Canara Bank bets growth on customer service

Usually when a Chairman takes charge of a bank, his first comment would be to increase the bank's deposits and advances. However, Mr. S.R.Raman,the present Chairman of Canara Bank had different views to comment. He said that his efforts would be to make all his customers only bank with the Canara Bank and which would mean better service to the customers. "Take good care of your customers and they'll take care of you", he further said.
He further stressed that his immediate focus would be first to initiate employees to know and understand all the features of the services offered by the bank. For example, employees would operate their own accounts only online, therefore, it would help them impart their knowledge to the customers easily. There is a perception problem with the customers, although public sector banks offer all the services offered by the private banks, still customers feel the latest service is given only by the latter. This is due to the fact that our own employees do not know all the features of the products and services provided by the bank.
Regarding challenges to be faced, he visualised that human resource would be a big challenge with about 5000 employees retiring in the next 3-4 years. To cope with this, the Bank would recruit about 4000 employees by next year.
For taking the Bank to the global, the Chairman said that the Bank is open to buying a small Bank in the US. Canara Bank expects to double its global business to 8% in the next 5 years.(BL 08.11.2010)