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A couple years ago, I decided to “get back into running.” I got a Fitbit and some new running shoes and decided I’d dip my toes into the competitive waters with an easy local charity 5K. What I didn’t realize was that the race started with a gradual, longer-than-expected uphill climb. By the time I reached the first turn, I was gassed. Meanwhile, the more seasoned runners—steady pace, calm breathing, data-driven training—cruised past me like it was a warmup jog. Afterward, when a friend asked how it went, I remember saying, “Apparently, there’s more strategy to running than just running.”
That, my friends, is the mortgage servicing industry in 2025.
Our question this month: If you’re a mortgage servicer, are you running strategically—or just running?
Whether you know it or not, you’re competing for borrower loyalty every single day. And the field is wide open. With less than one in five borrowers nationally returning to the lender who originated their loan, the opportunity for servicing retention has never been greater.
But before we all sprint out of the gates, answer me this: Why are the best servicers holding on to 60%+ of their customers, while others (even those with strong J.D. Power rankings) are struggling to hit 10%? And if you say, “Some servicers pound their portfolios daily with dedicated teams and others retain all of their origination and feed those deals back to the original LO” – you’d be partially right. Those companies do exist, but so do others who have seen higher retention simply by delivering a delightful servicing experience.
STRATMOR’s MortgageCX Servicing data tells a clear story: servicers who invest in deep, comparative benchmarking outperform their peers in key loyalty drivers—from trust and communication to ease of doing business. Yet most lenders and servicers treat low retention like the weather—unfortunate, unpredictable, and out of their control. It doesn’t have to be.
Benchmarking isn’t just about comparing numbers—it’s about finding the leverage points that move the needle on loyalty. It’s the difference between hoping you’re improving and knowing you are. If you ask most servicers how they measure their customer experience, you’ll hear something like: “We send a survey after call center interactions.” That’s like measuring an orchestra by listening only to the triangle.
Borrower experience in servicing is multi-layered. It’s Onboarding. Escrow. Billing. Digital tools. Communications.Call center speed, Call center empathy. Statement accuracy. Post-payoff experience. Each part plays a role—and each part either compounds trust or erodes it.
The challenge? You can’t fix what you can’t see. That’s where benchmarking changes everything. When you measure your CX across every stage and compare it to peers, you gain what psychologists call “contextual competence.” You stop grading yourself in isolation and start seeing where you truly stand in the market.
In 2006, Netflix launched its now-famous algorithm competition: a $1 million prize for anyone who could improve their recommendation engine by 10%. The key to winning wasn’t new data—it was interpreting existing data better. The winners, a group of data scientists from around the world, didn’t just analyze Netflix’s metrics; they compared them to hundreds of similar datasets and identified patterns that predicted loyalty behavior.
Benchmarking in servicing works the same way.
The goal isn’t to collect more surveys—it’s to understand how your borrowers’ experiences stack up against national patterns of delight and frustration. When you see, for example, that your “Escrow Management” scores are 15 points below the peer average—and that those same borrowers are half as likely to stay with you at payoff—you’ve just found your next investment target.
Benchmarking turns anecdote into action.
As Peter Drucker famously said: “What gets measured gets managed.” But I’d add a twist: “What gets benchmarked gets better.”
When I talk with servicing leaders, the conversation often goes like this:
“We already do customer surveys.”
“Great—what are you measuring?”
“Our call center satisfaction.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Really well—we score 4.7 out of 5.”
“So your retention must be strong.”
“Not really.”
This is the illusion of measurement.
You can’t solve a 360° problem with a 30° view.
The average servicer measures touchpoint satisfaction—not relationship health. That’s like a doctor asking, “How’s your elbow?” when the issue is your heart.
STRATMOR’s data shows that focusing narrowly on the call center misses nearly 80% of the borrower experience. The biggest drivers of loyalty—and disloyalty—happen elsewhere:
These are the hidden levers of retention. But without benchmarking, they stay invisible.
Here are three Benchmark-Driven Habits of Best-in-Class Servicers you can implement today:
There’s a saying I’ve always liked: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The servicers who will win the next decade are the ones benchmarking, learning, adapting, and improving in concert with the best minds in the industry.
So, before you sprint ahead this quarter, take a look around. Who are you really racing?
And more importantly—do you know how far ahead (or behind) you are? In the race for borrower loyalty, running smarter will not only keep you in the race, but help you win it. And benchmarking is the map that gets you there.
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MortgageCX is now integrated with Encompass®! Mike Seminari
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