Would You Like a Mortgage With Your Mocha?

BANKING ON GROWTH

There's no denying the meteoric growth of ING Direct since its launch in September 2000. How has the operation managed to come so far so fast? One answer involves the company's distinctive personality: its face to the customer.

"Look at an airline such as Southwest," says Kuhlmann. "People like them because they make it easy to fly. They also make you feel as if they're on your side by cracking jokes and not wearing standard uniforms. We're trying to do that with banking. We want to make people feel proud about saving their money -- even make them feel that it's a cool thing to do."

Another factor behind ING Direct's growth is its commitment to selling. Jim Kelly, ING Direct's executive VP of sales, says that it was a deliberate choice to avoid calling the people who answer the toll-free number at ING Direct "customer-service reps." Instead, they're called "sales associates." "We wear it on our sleeves, and we want everyone to understand that sales is at the core of what we do," says Kelly. Sales associates set up new accounts, serve up information to existing customers, and focus on the "smart sell": bringing in customer assets from other bank accounts and, ideally, helping them earn better returns.

I pull up a chair, don a headset, and listen to incoming calls taken by Aniello Maglione, one of ING Direct's top sales associates. The first caller, Myrna from New York, wants to close her account because she isn't in a position to save right now. "I've been there myself," Maglione empathizes. He persuades Myrna to keep a few bucks in her savings account while he transfers most of the money to her local bank's checking account. "When you have money, you can put it in," he says. Before hanging up, he and Myrna chat about an auto-withdrawal program that can help her save.

The next caller is Carmine from New Jersey. He's looking to move $1,500 from his ING Direct savings account into his local checking account. Maglione points out that the interest rate for ING Direct savings accounts is now at 2.22% and recommends that Carmine put a portion of his money into CDs. "Are you familiar with the laddering concept?" he asks. It's a plan to put equal amounts of money into one-, two-, three-, four-, and five-year CDs in order to earn a higher average interest rate. Carmine sounds confused. "I'm 66 years old, Aniello," he says in protest. "You're a young guy!" Maglione shoots back. He tries a few ways to get Carmine into laddering, but Carmine demurs.

Sales associates collect points toward a bonus by signing up customers for automatic-savings plans (the sort that Maglione discussed with Myrna), getting them to open new accounts, or helping initiate mortgages. On this particular Thursday, ING Direct's sales associates will handle 4,737 calls -- all of them without a script. "We want to hire people who have a winning attitude, who are hungry and independent," says Kelly. "You don't get those kinds of people if you ask them to read from a script."

One important objective at ING Direct is to answer at least 80% of calls within 20 seconds. Chief marketing officer Lewis points out that the incentive pay of everyone in the company is tied to the 20-second goal, which, for example, discourages the marketing team from launching campaigns that generate more phone inquiries than the company can handle. "You need to have the right resources without killing the cost model," Kuhlmann says, "and that's a daily struggle."

Indeed, one big worry at ING Direct is that the company will get too big too fast. "If we kept the juice on," Kuhlmann says, "we'd be running at a billion dollars a month in new assets. But we couldn't process that. We couldn't invest that or answer the phones fast enough."

DID WE MANAGE TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE?

On the fourth floor of the headquarters building -- known as the Pakhuis, Dutch for "warehouse" and pronounced "pack house" -- it's time for the 9 AM marketing-update meeting. "We're going through a shift right now," explains Chris Williams, vice president of brand strategy. "Our early customers were people who understood the value of saving. Now we're going after people who need to be educated."

There's a circle of 15 chairs by the windows, away from the honeycomb of cubicles. The meeting starts out with show-and-tell: a new piece of direct mail, the ads that will soon dominate every inch of available advertising space in Boston's South Station, an artist's rendition of what the ING Direct building in Los Angeles will look like once it is "wrapped" in orange for the opening of the first West Coast café.

There's some discussion about how to handle banks that are offering slightly higher rates than ING Direct -- such as Nova Savings Bank, which was advertising .01% higher interest on a one-year CD with a $500 minimum deposit. "There's definitely a 'What have you done for me lately?' feeling among customers," says Williams. "But we can make the point that we have the number-one rate [on average] for the year."