It’s challenging to stand out from your competitors in the mortgage industry, especially with the current state of the housing market. Competitive rates aren’t enough to keep borrowers or loan officers happy anymore. Quality customer service expectations continue to evolve, placing further pressure on mortgage companies to modernize their processes and systems.
In the past, organizations felt that the omnichannel approach was all they needed to provide quality customer service. While lenders need to provide several modes of communication for borrowers to access information, it’s also critical to consider automation for a better borrower experience.
A recent survey found that companies that offered omnichannel customer service could retain 89% of their customers. By contrast, the companies that didn’t provide seamless customer services retained just 33% of their customers. However, without automated processes integrated within these outlets, the time to close the loan goes up, borrower satisfaction goes down, and staff gets burnt out.
Fortunately, there are tools like Capacity, an AI-powered support automation platform that makes it easy to quickly answer questions, automate support tasks, and build solutions. If you’re ready to stand out from the competition in the mortgage space, take a look at what automated support with omnichannel customer service can do for borrowers—and how Capacity can go further.
1. Offer a borrower-centric experience.
One of the best benefits of omnichannel customer service is the ability to be customer-centric. Whether a first-time borrower with questions or a returning borrower wants to chat about refinancing, there is a channel available to meet their needs with excellent customer service seamlessly.
Instead of making customers search for insight, there are multiple communication channels to meet their expectations. For example, rather than funnel all borrowers toward a single phone number for customer service during the lending process, you can provide multiple ways for borrowers to get in touch with you, from email and social media to calling and texting.
During the loan processes, borrowers will want access to information about their loan status throughout the process, from origination to servicing to close. Capacity’s mortgage automation platform works parallel with lenders’ LOS to answer more than 84% of inquiries without human interaction. Tougher questions generate tickets for escalation, and those answers become part of the knowledge base, speeding up future interactions.
2. Provide more ways for borrowers and prospects to reach you.
It’s always good for borrowers to stay in close contact with lenders when applying for a home loan. After all, this process is a big deal filled with many deadlines that both borrowers and originators will need to pay attention to. That’s why lenders should make it easy for borrowers to get in touch along the way by offering several methods of communication.
The same holds true for potential borrowers. Lenders need to inform prospective borrowers of all of the necessary steps and processes they’re curious about. With automation, lenders can inform a borrower before they even enter the loan origination process and instill a sense of trust and expertise that turns prospects into borrowers.
Prospects and borrowers search for answers to their questions at all times of the day. Lenders can use that information to their advantage by making a fully branded chat solution available on a lending website. With a chat solution available, lenders can rest assured knowing that their prospects and borrowers are getting all of the information they need without bogging down their team members.
3. Give faster resolutions.
Time is a big factor in the lending process, so the sooner you can clear up potential problems, the better! After all, these days, borrowers aren’t used to waiting for answers. They expect them instantly, or they’ll move on to another lender that will provide them. Gone are the days of customers waiting days for an answer. If you don’t have a huge team of people working 24/7 or an AI-powered chatbot to provide instant answers, you could be missing out on the ability to offer an amazing customer experience.
Fortunately, automating certain aspects of customer service through AI-powered platforms can be a big help with this. For instance, Capacity lets you offer a knowledge base where customers can locate everything from loan requirements to office hours. And for those answers that require a human touch, Capacity offers the live chat option to tailor to your customers’ needs.
Either way, it’s easy to offer borrowers instant answers to questions, even in the middle of the night or during the weekend. Satisfy borrowers with quick resolutions without overwhelming your team!
4. Retain borrowers.
Offering instant answers any day or time is a great way to keep borrowers happy, which means retention goes up with it. Plus, since omnichannel customer service makes it easy for borrowers to get in touch with your team, you’re encouraging engagement every step of the way during the lending process—leading to more conversations with customers overall.
However, one factor that omnichannel customer support doesn’t consider is the originator’s experience. According to Stratmor Group, 87% of borrowers work with a lender through an existing relationship or referral. Keeping loan officers happy and in place is crucial for lenders to keep their borrowers because that is the relationship that people are making their decisions based on.
To keep loan officers happy, they must have all the tools they need as well. Capacity integrates with lenders’ key systems and interfaces with messaging platforms (like Slack, Teams, or email) so loan officers can quickly find answers by asking Capacity questions about borrower opportunities, loan statuses, guidelines, etc. Capacity will pull this information and provide the loan officer with an instant and actionable response, which reduces the time that loan officers spend manually logging into systems and searching for information.
5.Get better insights about borrowers.
Finally, omnichannel customer service makes it easy to understand better what your borrowers need. Capacity enables you to track borrower interactions at every touchpoint, including conversation histories and helpful data, which leads to a more personalized borrower experience.
By going back and reviewing overall customer conversations that have been recorded, you may notice many borrowers have similar questions around the same point in the lending process. With this information, it’s easy to provide relevant answers earlier on. And if you observe that borrowers have trouble finding a specific form on your site or seem confused by the wording on a page, you can make adjustments to streamline the process for future situations. In summary, having access to borrower interactions in one place can help improve borrower satisfaction.
Try Capacity.
Now that we shared the biggest benefits of pairing automation with omnichannel customer service, you’re on your way to improving borrower satisfaction. Discover how a mortgage automation platform like Capacity can support an excellent borrower experience.