Increased use of artificial intelligence chatbots by mortgage servicers is inevitable, and how it is presented to the consumer is important for customer satisfaction with the interaction, a J.D. Power study found.
A lower satisfaction score comes from consumers who aren't sure whether they are interacting with a bot or with a real person when using the chat function, Bruce Gehrke, senior director of lending intelligence, who authored the report, said.
AI was a hot topic at the recent Digital Mortgage conference. The top two finishers in the
As past J.D. Power servicer customer satisfaction surveys have noted, borrowers who are financially unhealthy, and thus more likely to reach out to their provider for questions and assistance, generally give lower scores for their interactions.
It also has noted that younger consumers
The company looked at
Of that group, just 9% used online chat as their first point of contact with their servicer, versus 48% that made a call to the customer service desk.
But the two youngest demographics that contain the bulk of future customers, Gens Y (those born between 1977 and 1994) and Z (1995-2006), were three times more likely to use a chatbot than older groups. (Note: J.D. Power's definitions place the millennials as a subset of Gen Y.)
The finding, showing a stark generational divide, creates an opportunity for servicers to improve how they interact with those groups.
"I think most servicers can view them as the future customer, the numbers are going to start to grow," Gehrke said. "So it's important to be able to address the concerns of those younger segments."
The real difference in quality comes when the bot is not just using scripted questions, Gehrke said. If the questions aren't perceived as scripted, the satisfaction is higher with the interaction.
Meanwhile, the benefit about self-service is ease of use.
"If the chat isn't delivering on the ease of use, then you start to see less satisfaction, even if you get the problem resolved," Gehrke said. "Because the feeling then is, I could have called anyway, and I would have been done by now."
On the origination side, however, a study from Cloudvirga found almost 60% of recent homebuyers said
Still, the majority of servicing customers who used chat to answer their question found it to be a positive experience, J.D. Power said.
About two-thirds (67%) of survey participants said it was to try to solve a problem, with 83% of that group responding their problem was resolved on that chat. They gave their servicers an overall customer satisfaction rating of 702 (on a 1,000-point scale), much higher than the 482 for those who could not solve their problem. Lenders are looking to increase the efficiency of their interaction with customers while not having to add staffers.
The study noted nearly three-fourths (73%) of customers who used chat said they interacted with a live person in the online chat, while 10% thought it was a chat bot, and 17% were not sure.
The group that responded they had a human interaction felt they had a better experience than those who thought it was a machine on the other side of the conversation, J.D. Power said.
A word of advice for servicers: "If you're going to push chat, make sure you have the capabilities aligned, because otherwise you create frustration, and frustration just drives lower satisfaction," Gehrke said.
