Davis sighs at those problems, and he admits it's been a rough transition. "Anytime we don't meet expectations in terms of service, it's painful," he says. "The buck stops here." Davis says that some of the vendors that WaMu had used have been fired, and by the end of 2003, all of the bank's customers will be on WaMu's own system. Its call centers are now open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Davis says that his team is now successful 80% of the time at resolving issues on the first call. The Web site Epinions gives the bank high marks for customer service.
Despite WaMu's hurdles, Killinger remains unruffled. He is focused on the future and spurs on his team to keep up the pace. "Most companies have difficulty sustaining themselves, because once they begin to do well, they get sloppy with execution and a little complacent. I worry about how I can keep coming back to folks and saying, 'I know that we have record profits this year, but here's why we have to improve.' I have to keep us on the edge all the time. We need to keep trying to change, to innovate, to be dissatisfied with the status quo."
As for Killinger's plan to be the Sam Walton of banking? Analyst Tejera says don't bet against him: "You can have a lucky streak for a few quarters, but you can't accomplish what they've done with just a lucky streak. They have good people; they have scale; they are very focused on their customers. For WaMu, the best is still to come."
To deliver top-notch service in a bank, stop thinking like a banker and start thinking like a retailer, says Deanna Oppenheimer, president of WaMu's banking and financial services group. Sure, redesigning stodgy branches is a start on changing the customer experience. But the harder job is letting go of some long-held assumptions about how banks should manage their employees. Here's how WaMu does it.
Hire for attitude. "We want to hire people who share the attributes of the WaMu brand: caring, dynamic, driven, fair," says Oppenheimer. Often, those people come out of the retail business, not out of the banking culture.
Cede control to the local level. At most banks, says Oppenheimer, staffing and product models are devised at headquarters and sent out to the branches for implementation. WaMu, on the other hand, adopts a retail model, allowing local priorities to be determined locally. "That lets a branch have a product and staffing mix that meets its market," she says. In a transient market such as Florida, for example, the focus may be on checking accounts. In a mature market such as Seattle, the emphasis might be on mortgage lending.
Don't be afraid to try off-the-wall ideas. Fish tanks in branches? A "For Sale" sign on the Sears Tower? They've both been vetted (and, for the moment, rejected) at WaMu's idea-generation meetings. The secret, says Oppenheimer, is that many WaMu employees and executives, including the bank's CEO, Kerry Killinger, did not come out of the banking culture, so they are free to think outside the vault. "We have often asked ourselves in meetings, 'What do you think real bankers would do on this one?' " says Oppenheimer. "I finally said, 'Kerry, we're 20 years into this now. I think we are real bankers.' "
Linda Tischler (ltischler@fastcompany. com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Learn more about Washington Mutual (www.wamu.com) on the Web.
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