Last week was a MONUMENTAL gathering of mortgage lenders in Washington, D.C. for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Annual Convention and Expo.
As MBA Chairman Chris George said, Change is in the air in the mortgage industry and this means one thing: Opportunity. The pace of innovation today is faster than ever before, and innovation speaks of breaking through the status quo.
It’s All About the Customer Experience
For the past several years, mortgage lenders have been in self-preservation mode, but it was crystal clear at this year’s MBA Annual Convention that everyone is focused on analyzing and improving the customer experience.
The number one reason a person decides to work with a specific loan officer is because of their relationship with that loan officer. When was the last time you stepped into your customer’s shoes as they contemplated making one of the biggest purchases of their lives – and how are you focused on improving your customer experience from your customer’s perspective?
Industry leaders are focused on re-humanizing the digital mortgage experience through a personalized borrower experience, including delivering the right message at the right time to the right person. The devil truly is in the details. It doesn’t take much for your customers to feel like you don’t understand them and their needs. It’s critical to develop a strategy for increasing your speed to market with personalization – at scale.
Your loan officers need technology that will make their jobs easier so they can focus on finding and building relationships. How does your tech stack help your loan officers improve their relationships?
As noted by STRATMOR, a failure to invest in marketing and technology leads to increased spending on sales. Start with a strategy of how you want to use your technology and data. If you don’t, then your technology will just cost you a bunch of money. But if you build change around your people, processes and technology, your technology investments will deliver meaningful return on investment.
The mortgage industry must be both high tech and high touch. Technology tools and solutions augment the process, but won’t replace the loan officer. Buying a home is an emotional experience that will forever require the human touch, but leveraging data and marketing technology can make your loan officers more efficient and help them get more and better leads.
At Total Expert, we are focused on marrying the digital simplicity consumers expect with the human connection they want with their loan officer – empowering loan officers to build customers for life.
Using Big Data to Improve the Customer Experience
A large reason for the accelerated pace of innovation is the technology advancements that are empowering lenders to leverage the data at your fingertips. According to STRATMOR, one year ago, 50 percent of lenders didn’t have an enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, which doesn’t mean they don’t have big data – but actually means they have many sources and their data is hard to use.
Data is critical to empowering lenders to personalize their marketing and communications, thus improving their engagement with prospects and customers – and increasing pull-through.
However, it’s clear that large amounts data in the industry isn’t being captured or leveraged. As the industry learns to walk before running, it’s critical to centralize data – and the customer experience.
Change Represents Opportunity
Margin compression, technology advancements and big data all represent significant opportunities to invest in transformation and leverage technology to be more operationally efficient and build better relationships.
A person’s home serves as the backdrop to every major event of their life. You’re not just in the mortgage lending business, you’re in the American dream business.
