By Arthur Lee

POSB customers at the Tanjong Pagar branch had a pleasant surprise early yesterday morning. Chief executive officer of DBS, Piyush Gupta came at 9am to greet each customer in the queue, distribute mandarin oranges and wish them a Happy New Year.

Mr Gupta also noticed 83-year-old Loke Yuen Kit being served by branch service manager Karen Ow at the other end of the branch. He went over to have a friendly chat and inquired about her banking experience with POSB.

Mr Gupta said that the POSB brand ranks very high in customer satisfaction. To further enhance this, POSB will gradually introduce a range of other banking services to meet customers' needs. He also recognised that sometimes there are long queues at the ATMs and counters, and that the bank is working to improve this.

Jeremy Soo, managing director and head of Consumer Banking Singapore said: 'We will focus on customer satisfaction and are committed to investing the attention and resources to improve on this dimension.'

BT understands that the bank will soon invest in more new self service automated machines to help reduce the waiting time at ATMs and the counters.

There are now five POSB branches that open seven days with extended banking hours and POSB is looking out for more strategic locations to expand their distribution network. It also has 120 Active Neighbours (senior citizens ) attached to various branches and POSB is looking at expanding their job scope so that they can help out with some counter transactions during peak hours.

This article was first published in The Business Times.