The journey to age equality

Kamal Baruah

(The writer can be reached at kamalbaruah@yahoo.com)

This is our second home where we spend most of the day and we do things right a little easier to make them happy. Customers make our time lively. Being one of the biggest organisations, it's always action-packed. Days are full of eventful at our desk. There is a massive pile-up of vouchers and we're surrounded by needy and elderly people. As a professional, we got the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning. I listen to my intuition at first sight. A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. It ain't interrupting our work nevertheless we got the opportunity to serve. Phones are constantly humming but we can't put it into aeroplane mode – so that one can fly. The awesome part is that it's not as scary as one might think. We keep the creative energy pumping at customers for a lively experience at the end of the day.

After all, banking is just all about numbers i.e. Hindu Arabic numbers from zero to nine. We keep our work aside for a non-transaction time and try to attend to customers promptly in a simplified way. They're short and energetic assistance and advice to ensure customers' satisfaction. They're to meet us for a pep talk. And we share to feel ease for them yet have a meaningful conversation on a day. People say that social media destroys human interaction but we found it easy to communicate and interact anytime anywhere. Interactive computer-mediated technology facilitates us to share information, ideas, interests and expression that helped us to keep in touch with them. Now Apps could bring a sea change to the digital world. The other day I was interrupted by an enthusiastic senior citizen "Can I submit my life certificate online?" It gave me immense happiness.

Now most of them have smartphones. Senior citizens explore its basic features and learn things like how to book a cab. They reach us for every small instruction given through SMS. Their voices were full of pity. The biggest challenge for them is how to explore the phone. They don't want to depend on children as youngsters lack the patience to keep on harping on it. Probably Help-Desk could be the right platform as we answer umpteen numbers of questions. Why should they use WhatsApp to send a message when they have SMS? Teaching them requires a lot of patience. Barcode based Kiosk made them confused as it misses auto flip, auto-align and update.

Senior citizens have seen such times of technological progress where there was a long queue sat Treasury for pensions, salaries and bills. Those were the lost art of March end. Now they know flipping pages on smartphones. The most important lessons are banking on mobile and how to keep it secure. Learning to use public utilities on Smartphone for electricity bills are also imperative. There're lifestyle and banking too. Now customers don't bring Passbook or PPO instead through WhatsApp.

We tell them to maximise the use of digital media to avoid queues. The other day I was listening "I am fully convinced your kind gesture but despite all technological advances we still love to come as we meet our friends every month. We burst into peals of laughter. And those human touches are perfectly suitable. It shows that Banks truly provide customers' friendly environment.

There are rising life expectancies and declining birth rates throughout the world. Thus it creates an increasing proportion of old to young. To promote their active participation in social, economic and political life, our society needs to empower older persons to ensure inclusiveness and reduce inequalities. India is with the UN theme "the journey to age equality".

Older people are an asset to society; their wisdom, value system and experience help in guiding and mentoring the present generation. Urbanization helps them for improving their quality of life. Also, it's vital for older persons' social inclusion. Although we face one too many a day at the end of the day, it's only a few can remind us. It is all about the relationship that builds a business as well as friendship. Future banking will certainly bring sea change after generation one after. Artificial intelligence, predictive analysis and machine learning promise to deliver maximum customer convenience in the future. And Android and iOS could be the greatest ever innovations in the 21st century. Our society should respond to its changing demographic realities while organising an interactive exhibition of population ageing.