Customer Service Excellence in Mortgage Servicing
Executives in the mortgage industry are used to technology developers promising them tools to make their operations better, cheaper and/or faster. Over the years, many such tools have emerged that fulfilled that promise and everyone has benefited.
But lately, we’ve been hearing technology executives claim that their mortgage servicing software can make companies better at customer service and more empathetic with the borrowers they serve.
That’s a stretch.
The key to an effective servicing team, especially on the default servicing side, is good recruiting, excellent training, and a bulletproof process. No technology will make you an empathetic servicer, but there are some ways good software can help.
What we mean by good software
Companies operating in the home finance industry use a lot of software, but we’re talking about core systems, the kind of mission-critical software that the business cannot operate without.
After 40 years of developing software for lenders, we can tell you that the best software platform is the one that allows the lender to operate their business the way they want in full compliance with easy adoption and use. The better it is, the less visible it is as a separate tool.
A good loan origination system (LOS) just becomes the way the company works. That’s why seamless integrations to third-party tools is so important. It shouldn’t feel any different. It should just be the way the company works.
It’s the same with the servicing platform. When we set out to develop a companion to our industry-leading LOS, we wanted to offer the same kind of experience. But when borrowers get into trouble, the servicing side can be more complex. Here’s how technology can help.
Good servicing tech puts power in the borrower’s hands
Most borrowers want to make their monthly mortgage payments and move on. There’s not much more to it. It’s when a borrower gets into trouble that the experience starts to register for them.
There are two keys to excellent customer service. The platform, on its own, can’t deliver it, but with the help of the servicer’s personnel and the borrower, it can be accomplished.
When contact is established between the servicer and the borrower, which is often a problem when borrowers get behind, it’s very important that the information in the core serving platform is updated in real-time so customer service representatives have current loan-level information readily available.
When servicers have the power to design a workflow and process that helps borrowers get back on track and then train their people to guide their borrowers through it, everyone succeeds.
But quite often, borrowers want to explore their options on their own, away from the pressure of dealing with a person over the phone. That’s why we built the industry’s first and only multi-lingual servicing portal accessible via mobile app.
Our data shows that our consumer-facing tools are now driving over 80% of all customer service inquiries to the web, where borrowers find their options delivered in a language they can easily understand.
No one is more empathetic to the borrower’s problems than that borrower. They just need an easy way to make sense of their situation and find an option that works for them.
Relying on technology alone without good recruiting, training, and process design doesn’t make the servicer more empathetic. It makes them inauthentic, which is something every borrower can identify very quickly.
To find out more about how the MortgageFlex Mortgage Servicing Platform can empower your team to be better mortgage servicers, reach out to John McCrea, SVP at 1-860-460-7418 to schedule a personal demo today.