FOUNDATION MAGAZINE FINANCIAL ADVICE STOCKLETTERS PORTFOLIO PMS BOOKS
BUY
HDFC Bank - Great Fail Redux?
Farhan Shaikh 05 December 2019
Economy & Nation
Over the past few days, customers of HDFC Bank are unable to access its net banking facility. Many of them stormed social media, like Twitter, with complaints that its online banking site and the app were not operational or working properly.
 
HDFC Bank says it has rectified the technical glitch in online banking facility, many customers say this is not the truth and they continue to face issues with net banking and mobile app. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI), due to the technical glitch, HDFC Bank servers kept sending ping to RBI servers, resulting in overloading. Due to this, RBI cut access of HDFC Bank servers to RBI servers, says a top official from RBI.
 
 
Responding to customers on Twitter, HDFC Bank says, "...we would like to state that the technical glitch has been rectified. Our NetBanking and MobileBanking App platforms have now stabilized. Once again, we would like to sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience caused."
 
 
However, according to Farhan Shaikh, a techie who works with leading IT company, this technical glitch at HDFC Bank takes place during the same time of the year. 
 
Here is what Mr Shailkh wrote in LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hdfc-bank-great-fail-redux-farhan-shaikh/)...
 
Last year, around the same time, HDFC Bank had taken an important decision. That of updating their mobile app. And they failed miserably at it. So much, that they had to take their app down from the App Store. I covered the entire saga here.
 
That was December 2018.
 
Coming back to December 2019 - and the Annul Failure Fest has gone straight from bad to worst.
 
This time, almost all the HDFC Bank customers have their accounts (literally) frozen - as they are unable to transact - neither through the mobile app, nor through their website (netbanking). Given the recent turmoil in the banking industry, there were strong rumours of HDFC Bank going bust. A lot of HDFC customers started using UPI (especially Google Pay and Paytm) to complete their transactions.
 
 
Some tried to link their Google Pay with HDFC Bank Account but were unsuccessful in doing so.
 
 
 
Worst reaction? People actually started UPI Apps to start moving money to other bank accounts.
 
 
This has to be the worst technical failure at this scale, given the fact that customers continued to complain as they were unable to transact or use the account till Tuesday afternoon (03/12/2019 - 04 PM). More than 24 hours have passed since people started complaining, and things have not changed. While according to some users, this is the third day of the issue.
 
But that's not the end of the tragedy.
 
Marketing It Wrong?
 
The marketing and social media teams of the brand have failed them in such crucial hours of crisis. Even when customers are unable to access (forget using) the HDFC Bank's mobile app, the Bank continued to send ads via push notifications. Just before publishing, I even received an SMS ad for personal loans. One of the worst manifestations of digital marketing at play.
 
 
Social Media - Business as Usual?
 
The social media team did not stop the pre-scheduled social media tweets which annoyed a lot of customers - given the timing where customers are extremely annoyed.
 
 
Even on Facebook, HDFC Bank kept posting about their different initiatives (API Banking Summit) and launches (co-branded Credit Card with Walmart). All the posts were filled with complaints regarding the website and mobile app issues. As one user rightly pointed out, such an outage has happened for the third time - which might mean quite a business loss for small and medium scale businessmen.
 
 
Online Reputation Mis-management
 
As you can see from the above screenshot, HDFC Bank continued to send across standard responses as customers were angry with the way the issue was being managed. On top of it, the ORM response also advised users to not have "undue concern". If nothing else, it reminds me of "no smoke without fire" proverb; even for those who did not want to read between the lines.
 
 
End is not near…
 
Just before hitting the publish button, I hit the page refresh on Twitter tab; only to see the #HDFCBankDown now trending at fourth rank in India Twitter Trends. This means more people are now tweeting about the issue, and most importantly continue to face it. Complete digital failure is pinching the customers hard, and many are contemplating the reason for the same - lack of focus on customer service or bank shutting down, just like the website.
 
 
ABC of HDFC Saga
 
Clearly, this was not a planned downtime, so there's nothing brand could have communicated in advance. However, post the initial issues, the brand could have easily stopped other not-so critical social media posts, or any sort of marketing notifications to further rub customers the wrong way. Most importantly, HDFC Bank should have skipped firefighting the "undue concerns" and instead spoke about the technological breakdown. In the digital age, customers expect brands to be honest and transparent about the issues. This looks like a complete loss of trust for the brand.
 
When fintechs in the country are setting new benchmarks in customer experience, large enterprise banks are expected to atleast have the basic customer journeys in place. Investing is one area where startups have completely taken over the realms from traditional fund houses when it comes to onboarding new investors. While payments bank have not taken off as they were expected to, the traditional banks are on brink of disruption. With such outages, banks will make it easier for customers to rethink their long-term loyalties and deposits.
 
Personally, I have been an HDFC customer since 2011. Even before this issue erupted, me, along with a lot many iPhone users were having mobile app-related issues. It was just last week I tweeted about iOS Touch ID not working on the app; so I have been using it only via PIN input.
 
Are you an existing HDFC Customer? How are you dealing with this issue? What do you think are the possible reasons behind this outage?
Comments
Milind Nadkarni
6 years ago
The "glitch" surfaced again on Saturday, 07/12/19 for at least 3 hours in the afternoon (at least 2:00pm till 5:00pm); Once again no explanation to customers; Taking them for granted that the customers can wait what choice they have ? This also proves the glitch was not solved as announced by the bank on 05/12 & 06/12. Pathetic state of affairs of technology management.
Reply
Ravindra Joshi
Replied to Milind Nadkarni comment 6 years ago
I suspect that HDFC Bank was under a cyber-attack aimed at drawing a hefty ransome from them.
Reply
Ramesh Poapt
6 years ago
anyway, hdfc bank requires a downturn. all that glitters may not be gold!
Reply
m.prabhu.shankar
6 years ago
HDFC should explain in public what is the technical glitch
Reply
ramchandran vishwanathan
6 years ago
Zero accountability. The least they can do is ack that a problem occured and ensure its not repeated
Reply
DeepakSB
6 years ago
All awards which HDFC bank have been advertising should be cancelled by award issuing institutions IMMEDIATELY.During withdrawal of Rs.500/- and Rs.1000/- notes in Nov.2016,I as a bank account holder (senior citizen ) since year 2000 (at my own home branch of HDFC) was asked to produce my KYC documents when I personally visited home branch.HDFC is such a in efficient,customer unfriendly,full with red tapes.ITS PRIVATE SECTOR BANK ONLY FOR NAMES SAKE.ITS WORST THAN ANY LARGE PUBLIC SECTOR BANK FOR A RETAIL CUSTOMER.MOST OF THE TIME BRANCH MANAGER AND SENIOR OFFICERS ARE NOT AVAILABLE AT THEIR DESK AND BANK MANAGED BY JUNIOR/CONTRACT STAFF.
Reply
Milind Nadkarni
6 years ago
What thousands of customers, like me, big and small, experienced over past few days was a culmination of - (a)Careless attitude towards customers simultaneously doing "bla, bla" about customer care, Customers will never be told what exactly happened - no transparency. This has been the attitude at least for past 6 years, (b)Lack of focus by IT dept on running the dept professionally catering to business (& in turn customer) needs rather than acting as a PR of bank and boasting about various technologies they have implemented. (c)Negligible internal accountability, no heads will roll, no promotions will be denied perhaps the people who failed in their duties and thus caused the chaos will be rewarded for successfully fire fighting it ! (d) No higher ups in the management (Direct reports of MD) stood up (or told to stand up) and gave a statement about this failure. Everyone thought it is a minor technical glitch which is not worthy of any explanation. The HDFC Bank clearly needs cultural change beginning at the top of every dept.
Reply
R V RAU
6 years ago
The bank is an Elephant .

It needs young blood to teach it how to dance.

I don’t mean sack the old blood. But get the balance right.

The search for a new CEO will help. Someone under 40 may just have the Adrenalin it needs to shake itself out of its 20th century ways.
Reply
R V RAU
6 years ago
Too big to fail I thought ?

Reply
Newme
6 years ago
I am concerned this may be a trial attack by hackers and they may be planning something big down the lane.
Reply
ICICI Pru
ICICIBank Coral credit cr
Aequs Web Banners Closes
  • EDITORS'
    PICKS
  • MOST
    POPULAR
  • MOST
    READ
Free Helpline
Legal Credit
Feedback
Buy Now!

Absolute Power

Inside story of the National Stock Exchange’s amazing success, leading to hubris, regulatory capture and algo scam

View Options

The Scam: Now in it's 12th Printing

29 Years Of The Scam: The Perennial Bestseller, reads like a Thriller!
#Scam92: Read the actual story.

Buy Now Gift Know More

Moneylife Online Magazine

Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.

1-year online access to the magazine articles published during the subscription period.
Access is given for all articles published during the week (starting Monday) your subscription starts. For example, if you subscribe on Wednesday, you will have access to articles uploaded from Monday of that week.
This means access to other articles (outside the subscription period) are not included.
Articles outside the subscription period can be bought separately for a small price per article.

Buy Now Gift Know More

Monthly Digital Access

Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.

30-day online access to the magazine articles published during the subscription period.
Access is given for all articles published during the week (starting Monday) your subscription starts. For example, if you subscribe on Wednesday, you will have access to articles uploaded from Monday of that week.
This means access to other articles (outside the subscription period) are not included.
Articles outside the subscription period can be bought separately for a small price per article.

Buy Now Know More

Full Archive access

Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
Complete access to Moneylife archives since inception ( till the date of your subscription )

Buy Now

Stockletters in 5 Flavours

Outstanding research that beats mutual funds year after year

Buy Now Know More

MAS: Complete Online Financial Advisory

(Includes Moneylife Online Magazine)

Buy Now Know More
We are listening!
Reset
Success!

To continue

Please

or

With