Public sector lender IDBI Bank is gearing itself up to face the crucial competiton from peers in the sector and does not want to lose out on customers due to any kind of ill experiences or perceptions garnered by him about the bank.

For this the bank has decided to generate feedback on the performance of its retail branches through a market research agency which would be acting as a 'mystery shopper' for the bank.

The mystery shopper will act like a normal customer and visit the bank without the knowledge of the bank officials and thus evaluate the quality of services offered by the branch and also get information about various products and services of the bank.

A senior IDBI Bank official said, "While the bank gets customer feedback through the grievance handling unit, we want to use another route to understand expectations, problems and even suggestion for new services or products. This is a fact-finding exercise and not a fault-finding effort".

"While a mystery shopping exercise is generally carried out at retail customer-centric industries, in the case of our bank, we would cover corporate finance branches as well. The direct monitoring could also throw up suggestions to start new services and to simplify various processes," the official said.