"Speed and effectiveness of communication has become truly essential in safeguarding consumer loyalty and establishing a long-term relationship."
Multiple sectors, including the mortgage industry, are responding to the ongoing disruption of changing consumer habits. Modern mortgage applicants are now far more tech-savvy, and brokers must adapt to deliver the complete digital experience that consumers demand.
Mortgage brokers now realise they are in a fight for survival, with the emergence of more agile digital-first fintechs out to win the hearts and loyalty of the customer. Speed and effectiveness of communication has become truly essential in safeguarding consumer loyalty and establishing a long-term relationship. In fact, the new wave of deep learning techniques such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), are surpassing expectations in mimicking the perceptions, reasoning, learning and problem solving of the human mind.
Empowering brokers to keep up with the market competition involves an end-to-end reimagining of traditional business models coupled with new solutions and innovations for both back-end and customer facing services. These new tools are changing how the sales approach and mortgage application processes work, making it easier for brokers to guide applicants through the process, and discovering additional opportunities within the data they collect from applicants along the way.
Consumer expectations have evolved to demand 24/7, real-time communication from mortgage lenders, and to match these expectations, brokers are deploying solutions such as chatbots to improve the overall digital experience. By 2020, chatbots coupled with RPA and AI will be handling no less than 85% of all customer service interactions, according to a report released by Gartner. With the potential to reduce processing times and costs by up to 40 and 50% respectively, it is not surprising that 11% of consumers have confirmed ‘chat with a live agent’ as their favourite channel of communication.
Mortgage lending is a data-heavy industry, with applicants often required to hand over multiple documents such as tax returns and bank statements. This often tedious process frequently leaves applicants frustrated with the entire experience, but also requires a great deal of time and effort on the broker’s side as well. Through the use of chatbots, brokers can bolster their digital capabilities to be future ready, improve their customer’s experience and reduce the mortgage decision making window to service more applicants quicker, through their preferred channel of communication.
In the coming years, chatbot algorithms will become more sophisticated, and capable of measuring applicant sentiment, mood and behaviour, thereby giving brokers’ enhanced means of tracking engagement throughout the end-to-end process of the digital customer journey. Each interaction matters, and as the digital age continues to expand, this sentiment will advance to become even more important. A personal touch will be expected to pair with next generation technologies, providing customers with the best overall digital customer experience.
Brokers bring the real world context that not only reduces customer pain-points, but also enriches customer interactions. Combined with technology, this creates the perfect platform to filter applicant information from multiple sources, presenting brokers with an accurate overview of the customer, and enabling them to speed up the resolution of the customers’ mortgage request.
With the rise of AI and conversational interfaces such as chatbots, the question might be asked, what are the long-term implications for brokers? Technology does not mean they will be phased out – quite the opposite, it will support brokers with critical insights at different touch-points of the customer journey, adequately preparing them to execute a fast and effective response. Brokers that correctly work technology into their processes will greatly optimise their workforce resources and see vast improvements in their customer interactions, giving applicants the digital experience they are looking for.
