Technology automates. Humans elevate.
Technology helps mortgage loan officers reduce manual, repetitive tasks so they can enhance the experience for borrowers and co-marketing partners alike. Loan officers won’t be replaced by technology, but the loan officer who doesn’t leverage technology will be replaced by the one who does.
In short, you have to personalize and then get personal.
Personalize
Know Preferred Channel of Communication
In today’s modern, digital era, most people work across multiple devices – 3.64 on average – and expect seamless flexibility. Whether via text, email, social, mobile apps or the web, it’s vital to understand your customer’s preferences – and communicate accordingly.
The modern loan officer leverages CRM data to expand their reach and provide more value to their customers. Communicating across a customer’s preferred channels makes the loan process easier and can boost repeat business and future referrals.
Engage Customers with the Three R’s
Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time is the sweet spot of personalized outreach.
A Marketing Operating System (MOS) empowers MLOs to act on their data to identify opportunities and buying signals that can trigger timely, relevant – automated – communications when borrowers are most apt to refinance, downsize or take out their next mortgage.
In fact, 73% of leads, whether real estate agents or referred clients, are won by the first point of contact. And there’s no such thing as responding too fast, as loan officers that respond in five minutes convert twenty-one times more leads than those that wait even 30 minutes.
Your technology should empower loan officers to not only increase productivity but help them be more precise and personalized with their outreach.
Get Personal
Beyond elevating personalization, digital processes and intelligent automation will eliminate repetitive work, freeing up your loan officers’ schedules for more important tasks. To thrive in a digital era, organizations need to rethink the role their workforce plays in driving competitive advantage. Thriving will mean investing in and prioritizing the fundamentals of relationship-building and the human touch to enable deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Shrinking margins and commoditization of products and services are forcing lenders to focus on enhancing the customer experience if they want to keep up. In today’s highly competitive, low-growth, low-margin market, it’s not your technology that sets you apart. It’s your people, your brand and your processes.
Face-to-Face
Customers appreciate – and expect – an experience that feels personal and streamlined.
From submitting loan applications or reviewing real-time interest rates from an iPad or mobile device, consider helping them strengthen their personal relationships, speed up the loan approval process and scale their books of business with technology.
Create a Seamless Experience Across the Customer Journey
Too often, loan officers create unnecessary gaps in the customer journey when prospects aren’t ready to buy, have paperwork in hand or have successfully transacted. Just because someone can do it alone doesn’t mean they want to. Today’s consumers not only expect personalized experiences across channels, they reward those who do it well with referrals and repeat business.
Your loan officers must educate and engage customers, managing customer journeys as if they will never end. With so many tasks done online – often exclusively by the borrower – loan officers can deliver parallel support during these processes, building trust and carving out lifelong relationships.
Keep Borrowers Connected and Coming Back
Want some good news?
As loan officers scale their books of business, it gets harder to stay connected to customers. However, that hard-won list of customers can be a loan officer’s most valuable resource, via referrals and additional loan products. The catch is they must first be able to remember who they did business with in the first place.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
One often overlooked way to cut through the noise to deliver exceptional value and create sustainable success is by conducting Annual Mortgage Reviews (AMR). Using AMRs help showcase your value to clients and separate you from your competitors. Better yet, when they need financial services, you’ll be their first call.
Modernize the Mortgage Experience
Modernizing your loan officers’ workflow technology is no longer a “nice-to-have,” it’s a “must-have” if you hope to drive revenue growth and improve customer experience. Tell your loan officers it’s time to personalize and get personal.
Dave Savage the founder of Mortgage Coach, is a mobile tech pioneer and a mortgage industry agent of change. A renowned speaker and keynote at mastermind events, Dave is committed to educating and preparing lenders and loan officers for the Digital Mortgage Revolution. To date, he has interviewed more than 1,000 industry leaders and the Mortgage Coach channel has been described as the most valuable YouTube channel for mortgage professionals.
