Customer Service: Commerce Bank

Who: Commerce Bank
Home Base: Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Year Founded: 1973

Sunday morning in Gloucester Township, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia, is like Sunday morning in most places. Blackwood-Clementon Road, which churns during the week with harried commuters, feels eerily quiet. The strip mall there looks deserted. Even Laurel Hill Bible Church, across the street, is calm, since the congregation has already filed in.

The only sign of life is at the corner bank, where seven people are huddled in the ATM alcove between the door and the lobby. Curiously enough, they're not using the ATM. They look as though they expect the lobby to open at any minute. Which is to say, they look ridiculous. Don't they know it's Sunday? Don't they realize they're at a bank?

But at 9:50 AM, something amazing happens: The bank's doors open, and branch manager Regina McGee ushers the group inside. Darryl Pettus, a 33-year-old grocery-store clerk, deposits money into his ailing sister's account so that she can pay her health insurance. Before long, there are unshaven men in Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirts emptying sandwich bags filled with change into the coin-counting machine and children dressed for Sunday school comparing tongues stained red by the bank's cherry-flavored lollipops.

Extraordinary? Actually, no. This is an average Sunday at Commerce Bank, which prides itself on being the most convenient bank around. It may also be the most unconventional. For starters, it doesn't observe traditional banking hours. No Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 (or 9-to-3) limited availability. Commerce is open seven days a week. Typically, the branch offices are open from 7:30 AM to 8 PM during the week and for most of the day on weekends. Gloucester Township is the exception: Because Fridays are so busy, the drive-through window serves customers until midnight -- make that 10 minutes after midnight. Thanks to the companywide 10-minute rule, the branches open 10 minutes early and stay open 10 minutes late, an added convenience for early birds and procrastinators. "This," says McGee, "is the way banking should work."

Why such unbankerlike behavior? Because Commerce, based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with branches throughout the state as well as in Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania, doesn't model itself on the giants of its industry. Its models are the giants of retailing, including the Home Depot, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart. President and CEO Vernon Hill believes fundamentally -- and tells anyone who will listen -- that Commerce isn't in the banking business. Rather, it's in the retail business, and its business model revolves around becoming a power retailer. "The problem with most banks is that they abuse their customers every day. We want to wow ours," Hill says. Banking is practically a dirty word around Commerce. As chief retail officer Dennis DiFlorio puts it, "The greatest insult you can give someone here is to say, 'You're thinking like a banker.' "

The key to Commerce's business strategy is its branches, which Hill often refers to as "stores." Other banks try to steer customers away from their branch offices by offering incentives to use ATMs or by limiting the number of teller visits allowed per month. Commerce does just the opposite. While it still gives customers the option of banking through its ATMs and its award-winning Web site (used by 29% of Commerce customers), Hill and his staff are trying to lure more customers into the store. Commerce distinguishes itself with its commitment to friendly and attentive service, he says. That's where customer relationships are built -- relationships that start with checking accounts and eventually lead to mortgages. The extended hours, gifts for opening new accounts, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and historic murals on display are intended to attract visitors. At some branches, tellers take turns greeting customers inside the front door, just as Wal-Mart greeters do. "People will always choose to bank in person," says Hill. "But banks keep pushing them to use ATMs and online banking, because those are lower-cost transactions. Everyone else has given up on branches."

In the past three years, Commerce has nearly doubled its number of branches, from 96 to 185. This growth has fueled the increase of an even more important element: deposits, the bank's equivalent of store sales. As an industry, commercial and savings banks saw deposits increase about 8% last year. Commerce's deposits grew 38%, to more than $10 billion. "For the past 40 years, banks have said, 'Let's focus on growing loans,' " says Hill. "But what we've learned to do is grow low-cost deposits." Commerce offers free checking accounts in exchange for little or no interest, a trade-off that customers seem to accept.