It’s Fall and, at the Springer house, we are avid football fans. Even growing up, I never really got into auto racing, but my interest was piqued when I read this month’s InFocus article, “The Essential Questions for Designing a Race-Winning Mortgage Customer Experience” by STRATMOR Customer Experience Director Mike Seminari.
Mike does a tremendous job highlighting the many parallels of auto racing to our industry by using racing to explain the key roles and tools that go into designing a world-class Customer Experience (CX) strategy in mortgage lending. It’s a fun and informative read, and it points out the importance of having the right tools in place and a skilled and proficient team to ensure borrowers are delighted by their mortgage experience. Ours is similar to the importance of a proficient pit crew that either enables a winning race or leaves their driver in the dust.
Senior Advisor Sue Woodard is the author of our Customer Experience Tip this month. To say Sue is a seasoned traveler is an understatement, so when she has a good experience as a customer — or a not so good one — her interpretation of how the customer experience process is handled is solid gold. You’ll want to read Sue’s article to find out how she explains translating a vision of an excellent mortgage customer experience into action by your front-line people in “Customer Experience on the Front Lines: Turning Vision into Action.”
Thank you for joining us for the September Insights Report. If you have customer experience strategies on your mind, please reach out. We will see how we can assist you through our MortgageCX program. You can learn more about MortgageCX on our website and by contacting Mike Seminari directly.
I was maybe six years old the first time I saw a NASCAR® race on TV. I remember I was thoroughly unimpressed. The only thing that seemed to break the monotony of the cars driving around in endless circles for three hours was when they periodically had to stop and have helpers run around their cars in a frenzy. What really struck me as odd was that a high-speed race that ultimately came down to feet or even inches was so heavily dependent on how quickly the cars got in and out of “the pit.”
Over the years, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for the precision, power and teamwork that goes into a NASCAR victory, but my early impressions of the importance of the pit were interestingly right on. “The pit” is often cited as the place where races are won or lost.
Why am I talking so much about NASCAR in a mortgage article? There are a surprising number of parallels between auto racing and mortgage lending. Originators are not unlike the “rock star” drivers. Processing managers are like the crew chiefs keeping the “pit crew” processing team accountable to high levels of performance. Mortgage executive leaders are the savvy owners, steering through the twist and turns of the market from a big picture perspective. Perhaps the strongest parallel is the idea that victory is won by the whole team and not by any individual.
In this article, we dig into the key roles and tools that go into designing a race-winning Customer Experience (CX) strategy, and how each contributes to the overall victory. If mortgage lender employees can work together like a top-tier NASCAR team, they just may be able to edge out the competition in this race of dollars and basis points (bps).
We all say we want “customers for life.” But what does this mean to your people? With a shared vision and by creating awareness and accountability across the organization, mortgage lenders can create a superior experience for their customers.
STRATMOR Group offers a suite of data products and mortgage advisory services to power your performance, including industry-specific studies. Get the data driven advantage!
Recently, Brett McCracken and I discussed technology innovations. Blockchain and eClose advancements were at the top of our topic list. These discussions reminded me of a time early in my mortgage career when I led a sales team for a mortgage software company.
Lenders have an opportunity to engage in the borrower relationship from the very beginning of the process by incorporating real estate search and research, referral partners and the lender’s financing offers into a single online ecosystem for the convenience of the buyer.
Shifting from refinance to purchase business will be significant change for CD lenders who have trained their staff and optimized their processes for refinance transactions. STRATMOR Sr. Partner Garth Graham digs into the changes CD lenders need to make to have success in a purchase market.
In the industry’s current environment, lenders are faced with making tough decisions in their efforts to “right the ship.” STRATMOR offer insight into factors lenders should consider.
Even in challenging times, lenders still need and want high-producing, purchased-focused LOs, and for high producers, signing bonuses have been a big part of the story.
STRATMOR Senior Advisor Sue Woodard outlines six key insights from the STRATMOR team to help ramp up employee engagement for any change.
Feel free to reach out with any questions or needs we might be able to help with.
