Of what significance can disjointed 140 characters be to India’s biggest private bank? Well, if they happen to be ‘tweets’ on a hugely popular micro-blogging site, the answer is obvious!

ICICI is required to monitor nearly 1,500 to 2,000 tweets on its twitter address every day. @icicibank_care receives many conversational bits that it carefully follows. Here is one of those typical tweets.

“6 days and counting… money2india has no time to even do step 1 (debit from source). Alright I’ve got other options too.”

And the ICICI reply is as follows:

“Sorry abt the trble. Do email us @ care @icicibank. com wid details & yr contact info so that we cn luk into it.”

As is evident, the bank’s objective is to align its communication channels with those used by an increasing base of customers and their ‘influencers’, including Twitter, or other online fora like blogs. It recognizes that many of its service users and their influencers happen to spend more and more time on digital and other user driven media. The bank wants to be present everywhere its customers are.

For record, it presently has more than 500 twitter followers. An increasing proportion of the bank customers now choose to transact online (the number is in millions, according to the bank spokesperson). Pinstorm helps ICICI respond to tweets daily. It’s either to thank for a complimentary conversation or to correct any wrong perception.

All tweets are read and stored for reference and analysis by the bank. This only emphasizes how Twitter is fast gaining in stature and popularity as a marketing and customer-building tool. Staunch critics might term tweets mere ‘pointless babbles’, but experts view them as a powerful tool to feel the people’s pulse, which businesses cannot afford to ignore.