DCB Working On Doing Away With IVR

Murali M. Natrajan, MD & CEO – Development Credit Bank (DCB) in an interaction with Biztech2.com on the sidelines of the CII Banking Tech Summit 2011, gives a top management view of some of the technology related aspects of banking. He addresses Biztech2.com’s queries on the bank’s strategy to collaborate with UIDAI, his views on cloud computing and the latest IT initiatives at DCB.

What is DCB’s strategy to leverage UID?

KYC norms are a very critical aspect of opening a bank a/c and any mistake on that part is intolerable. UIDAI will go a long way in listing mandatory details of the citizens. This will reduce the burden on banks to undergo lengthy process and paperwork for opening bank accounts. Once a citizen has a UID number, he bypasses the need of going through the bank’s KYC process. Thus, from a bank’s perspective the a/c opening process will be faster, providing convenience to the bank as well as customer. It’s important to note, though, that the KYC procedure is currently a long drawn process.

DCB is constantly looking for ways to make the KYC process safe and yet painless for the customer. The bank would definitely go for UIDAI registration for its new customer acquisitions.

Can you outline some of the latest IT initiatives undertaken by DCB?

Recently, DCB launched ‘DCB On The Go’, a mobile banking service. Apart from other customer service channels, DCB’s customer will also be able to transact on mobile and access almost any kind of banking services and transactions on it. It is one more way to provide customers the ease of transacting on the go, so they don’t have to visit the branch.

The bank is also working on ‘Customer Single Screen’, a facility for operator or branch person, which will collapse different screens into a single User Interface. This will shrink the current process where the user has to switch through multiple screens while addressing customer queries.

‘IVR Elimination’ is another major initiative under process, which will entirely do away with the typical IVR part of the customer calls. The customer usually complains of being subjected to various loops before a Customer Service Representative takes over the call. Although this initiative would have many implications about adding manpower and so on, but from a customer’s perspective, it would be a winner.

Where do you see the cloud model heading?

I do think there is a huge opportunity for cloud in terms of reducing cost but the questions on security are still not answered completely. It looks like a good option to reduce cost and still expand operations. I believe we will witness a wide adoption of the cloud model in the near future. However not before the security issues are dealt with.