How Chatbots Can Improve The Mortgage Customer Service Experience

The mortgage application process is slow and painful for loan officers and home buyers alike😴

Chatbots are here to change that🤖

This guide explains how 👇

The Loan Officer’s Dilemma

We looked it up and it turns out the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun” is backed up by some real science.

Research has shown that when you’re doing an activity that is engaging and goal-oriented, you perceive time as going by faster than if you were doing something less engaging.

If you’re a loan officer this is a huge problem.

Mortgage applications are mind-numbingly boring for your customers.

From their perspective, they fill out complicated forms, submit a heap of boring documents and then anxiously wait while the lender does some weird magic in the background to either approve or reject the application.

The sheer banality makes an already long application process feel never-ending.

In an era when customers are used to buying things at the click of a button,this is unacceptable from a customer service standpoint.

Even though you are obliged to collect all of those boring details to generate accurate quotes, homebuyers still want a quick and painless customer experience and most LO’s aren’t giving it to them (even if it is unintentional).

Now you might be wondering why this matters…

Homebuyers are going to complete the application process regardless of how boring it is because they need a mortgage if they want to buy a home right.

Well, that’s true, but it’s not that simple.

Customer service isn’t just a cosmetic change to the way you run your business. It has a very real impact on the number of leads coming in through the door

If you are a small or mid-sized loan origination company, you’ll know that word-of-mouth referrals are a great way to generate leads. People talk to their friends and families about their experience of getting a mortgage and in a lot of cases, those friends and family will use those conversations as a reference point when they are looking for their mortgages.

As an LO you really want to be a part of these conversations in a good way. You want your customers to recommend your services to their connections so that they become your customers.

But the way mortgage applications currently occur is significantly hampering your ability to do that. Put simply, people aren’t going to remember their mortgage application experience fondly when it feels as slow and unengaging as it does today, and that is costing you word-of-mouth referrals.

The Solution

To be clear, you can’t reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a mortgage application. 

You need to collect all those forms and documents to generate accurate quotes and remain compliant with the strict regulations that govern the mortgage industry.

You can, however, change the way your customers perceive the time spend on their loan application and make them feel like it’s going by a lot faster than it actually is.

This is where chatbots come into the picture.

Think of them as replacements for your forms.

Instead of collecting all the details you need to originate a loan through a form, you collect them through an automated chat.

This simple change boosts the level of engagement in the application process considerably.

Rather than spending hours filling out a bunch of cumbersome forms, your customers are now being guided through the entire loan application process by a fully-automated loan officer.

The mind-numbingly boring form-filling process is transformed into a personalized consultation with an expert and that keeps your customers engaged through the entire process.

They spend the same amount of time completing the application, but now the actual process of filling out the application feels, for lack of a better term, “fun.”

The best part is that most of your competitors aren’t using this strategy so if you adopt it, you stand out from the competition in a big way, and that is how you give your homebuyers a better customer service experience.