ICICI Bank launches call centre at Hitec City

Hyderabad: ICICI Bank has launched its new customer care centre at Hitec City in Hyderabad. The facility is supposedly the largest in the Indian banking sector till date with a capacity of 1,100 seats. The bank plans to double the capacity of the call centre in the next one to one-and-a-half years.

The Hyderabad facility was inaugurated by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on 19 September 2002.

ICICI Bank managing director K V Kamath says the proposal to double the capacity was largely due to the rapidly-increasing growth in online transactions by its customers. The bank has a 620-seat call centre in Mumbai, which has been acting as a multi-channel contact centre for customers. The centre provides customers with options of self-service through interactive voice response as well as the facility of personalised communications with customer service officers.

Kamath says the bank is active in promoting alternative channels for banking such as ATMs, phone and the Internet to provide the convenience of high-quality 24x7 service to its customers. "Our new call centre is aimed at meeting the growing customer preference for phone banking."

While the Mumbai centre was set up at a cost of Rs 20 crore, the new facility at Hyderabad came up at an investment of around Rs 50 crore.

ICICI Bank executive director Chanda Kochhar says the call centre is the virtual face of ICICI Bank, representing the bank to the customer. "It leverages state-of-the-art technology to offer high-quality service and convenience to our customers."