I was at a speech by the president of ING Direct the other day and he shared some interesting insights into their success.
Their strategy is to be more like a retailer than a bank. They offer just 8 financial products to keep things simple. They want using the web site to be simple. All of this is to keep costs down. All the "experts" told them they were making a big mistake by not pushing other products onto online customers like the other banks do, but ING found from their own research that customers want to be on and off the site in 15 seconds, so they keep their site very basic. In fact, they feel their growth is largely based on the simplicity of their operation. He pointed out that ING is consistently rated as the worst web site by industry metrics, which only points out that the industry has no clue what customers really want. When the experts ask people what they want in an online banking site, they come up with a long list of fancy requirements. What actual customer behavior shows is they prefer a very simple site.
They are getting 100,000 new customers a month, nearly half from word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers, so they believe they are doing things right. But they are also "firing" between 2,000 to 5,000 customers every month as well (meaning ING has chosen to close the account). This is done when a customer is too costly and too demanding; in other words, the customer calls and emails too much.
Their strategy is to be more like a retailer than a bank. They offer just 8 financial products to keep things simple. They want using the web site to be simple. All of this is to keep costs down. All the "experts" told them they were making a big mistake by not pushing other products onto online customers like the other banks do, but ING found from their own research that customers want to be on and off the site in 15 seconds, so they keep their site very basic. In fact, they feel their growth is largely based on the simplicity of their operation. He pointed out that ING is consistently rated as the worst web site by industry metrics, which only points out that the industry has no clue what customers really want. When the experts ask people what they want in an online banking site, they come up with a long list of fancy requirements. What actual customer behavior shows is they prefer a very simple site.
They are getting 100,000 new customers a month, nearly half from word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers, so they believe they are doing things right. But they are also "firing" between 2,000 to 5,000 customers every month as well (meaning ING has chosen to close the account). This is done when a customer is too costly and too demanding; in other words, the customer calls and emails too much.