November 27, 2025·
post
Funny how retail banking upgraded all its tech, but kept its habits.
Funny how retail banking upgraded all its tech, but kept its habits.
No matter which channel you use, the bank’s first instinct is to push you to another one.
It’s the digital version of “sir, woh counter pe jaiye", now featuring WhatsApp, bots, mobile/phone banking and OG net banking.
- Use chat? “Please call.”
- Call? “Please visit branch.”
- Visit branch? “You can do this on mobile banking.”
Tech upgrades happen, but processes stay stitched together with duct tape and collapsing under legacy debt. Channels don’t talk to each other → customers get bounced around like a football. And "omni channel CX management systems"? They are just fancier dashboards adding to noise.
Retail banking nailed omnichannel, just not the way we hoped.
True omnichannel is long term but expensive, expansive and cumbersome before it snowballs into a top line avalanche and proves efficiencies of scale.
Some things never change even when everything else does.
P.S. Secretly wishing HDFC Bank (under Anjani Rathor) becomes that exception. And an actual neobanking pioneer (not another wrapper).
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