Although mortgage servicers technically work for the investors that pay them, the state of the business today requires that they make consumers front-and-center in their operations.
The shift in servicers' priorities from being investor-driven to consumer-centric has come largely as the result of heightened regulatory scrutiny by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
These changing business dynamics make it a great time to be in servicing, "because you have the ability to make a difference" with consumers, Craig Martin, a director in the mortgage practice at J.D. Power and Associates, said during the recent National Mortgage News servicing conference in Dallas.
Still, customer satisfaction has to be rooted in the core business of servicing loans, rather than trying to make borrowers happy just to make them happy, he said. The trick is finding ways where those two objectives intersect.
For example, younger consumers tend to prefer self-service tools and want to engage with their servicers online — a channel that happens to be more cost effective than routing inquiries through call centers or in-person interactions at branch locations.
Servicers that ignore consumer demands for greater connectivity and Web-based tools, are "not going to exist for very long," Martin said, adding there must a focus on simplicity and transparency in those interactions.
Quicken Loans learned that lesson of simplicity first-hand two years ago, with an email letter it created to send to delinquent borrowers. The email included details about everything consumers would need to know about their late payments. But the email proved ineffective with consumers because it was too complicated, explained Derek Beaumont, a marketing director at Quicken Loans.
So Quicken — which last year ranked No. 1 in its first appearance in
Servicers need to get feedback from borrowers throughout the loan servicing process to make sure their operations are effective, Shawn Kormanek, CitiMortgage managing director of mortgage collections and loss mitigation, said during a keynote presentation at the conference. CitiMortgage uses surveys to get feedback from consumers on their experiences.
Kormanek worked at GE before he joined CitiMortgage, a company known for its adherence to
The servicer regularly seeks feedback on how to improve its processes from regulators, its own employees, and even other servicers.
"We're not competitors any more when it comes to servicing. We're dealing with the same issues, the same challenges every single day," Kormanek said of collaborating with other servicers.
Today, servicers tend to be reactive in their borrower interactions online: a consumer posts a comment on social media, and CitiMortgage responds to it, Kormanek said. But as servicers continue to embrace advances in consumer-facing technology, they should put an emphasis on being proactive.
"It is not about the process, it is not about the product, it is about the experience the customer has with the product, and that is going to drive your success and profitability," he said during another panel.
The ability for customers to go to a website and get the information or service they need is important to developing customer loyalty, said Dana Dillard, executive vice president of Nationstar Mortgage. Consumers are less likely to be loyal to a business when they can't access basic information online and have to place a phone call for help, she said.
Echoing Kormanek's point about servicers not being competitors in the new environment, Dillard said that from the consumer point of view, they are not comparing their current servicer's platform with the systems of Bank of America's or Chase's. They are comparing their experience with a particular mortgage servicer to the
