Today’s borrowers expect the same speed, convenience and personalization from their lenders and servicers as they are used to with leading retailers such as Amazon and Apple. A recent McKinsey survey reveals that for most borrowers ‘exceptional customer experience’ is almost as important as getting the ‘best rate’. As digital technologies enable customers to engage with lenders over multiple channels, contact centers are fast becoming a critical component in a lender’s ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Evolving into an omnichannel experience hub
Buying a home continues to be the biggest financial decision most people will make in their lives. It is also a lengthy, complex and nerve-wracking process that leaves many borrowers frustrated and dissatisfied, making customer retention a major challenge for lenders. Recalibrating the traditional call center strategy and evolving into a digital-first omnichannel contact center can help lenders better align with emerging customer demands and outperform in a tough market environment. Here’s how.
1. Meet customers wherever they are for superior customer experience and satisfaction.
As digitally savvy consumers demand quick turnaround from businesses, self-service options and channels that can be accessed on-the-go like email and chat, are gaining popularity. This means call centers must go beyond providing basic customer service to delivering customer-centric experiences that not only address complex customer queries but also identify opportunities to increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately, market share. According to Hubspot Customer Service Survey 2018, 62% of customers prefer to communicate with businesses using email, 48% by phone and 42% by live chat. Omnichannel contact centers enable you to optimize the mix of channels, including voice, chat, chatbots, email and text, to deliver unified and seamless experiences. The result: customers can engage with you on a channel and in a language of their choice – leading to reduced customer effort and greater customer satisfaction.
2. Deploy intelligent analytics to better understand customers and optimize interactions.
As borrowers increasingly use digital channels to engage with lenders, the growing volume of data presents both opportunities and challenges. The opportunity lies in the ability to use the data to address customer concerns, reduce costs and improve performance. The challenge however lies in the need to extract what is meaningful and make it available to relevant decision makers. Deploying Customer Intelligence tools as part of the contact center solution helps you perform sentiment analysis and use data to better understand your borrowers’ needs and frustrations. Advanced text and speech analytics help detect customer sentiments and emotions, raising ‘red flags’ for escalation or intervention and identifying opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Such tools provide rich insights into why customers are calling and what’s confusing them, in turn enabling you to route customer calls to not only the right areas but also deflect them to lower cost channels. The result: reduced cost-to-serve and personalized customer service.
A leading residential mortgage services provider used a speech analytics and customer intelligence solution to analyze 30,000 customer interactions and gain insights into contact triggers and customer experience. By detecting the emotions of borrowers calling in, performing root cause analysis and mapping their customer journey, the servicer was able to reduce cost to serve by 15%, and improve customer service and compliance by 10%.
3. Improve borrower communication and education for increased retention.
Once you have deep insights into borrower behavior, an omnichannel contact center is critical to nurturing and engaging borrowers through a contextually relevant lead generation process across voice and digital channels. As lenders increasingly embrace digital transformation, insights from an Ellie Mae survey show that the concept of digital mortgage starts before and extends beyond the application process. About a third of all surveyed homeowners conducted research online before they applied, while 19% used online resources for loan origination and 8% used it post-closing. This clearly presents an opportunity to offer educational resources and relevant solutions – including providing refinance offers and educating them on cash-out refinance or rate/term reduction opportunities – on a channel of customer’s choice. The result: optimal targeting and superior conversion.
Delivering next-gen customer experience for increased retention and growth
A McKinsey study shows that 70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they are being treated. This is forcing businesses to move from a product-centric to a service-centric model in order to differentiate themselves and grow market share. In this emerging scenario, transforming a traditional call center into a robust omnichannel contact center offers a multitude of benefits. By supporting a borrower’s end-to-end journey across a mix of voice and digital channels, it can help lenders reduce cost-to-serve by as much as 20% and elevate borrower experience for superior loyalty and growth.
Learn about Sourcepoint’s Omnichannel Contact Center & Collections solution for lenders and services.
