Pain Points Lenders Can Resolve With Mortgage CRM Technology

Story as published in MReport, your trusted source for mortgage banking news.

By Kirk King, President of Halo Programs, Inc.

Thanks to mortgage CRM technology, lenders can address many of the pain points they face. This means lenders can improve their time management, lead generation, and customer retention rates, as well as providing the best service possible to their customers.

The best thing a lender can do for their customers is to improve the borrowing experience. However, that can be difficult to do with so many challenges facing them every day. There are four pain points lenders face that can be addressed with mortgage CRM technology.

1) Too Much to Do, Not Enough Time

Far too often, staying on top of a customer’s needs means bouncing between various devices and logins. This kind of disorganization can muddle the information lenders rely on to do their job, which will inhibit their productivity. Busy loan officers often find themselves weighted down by clunky, disparate systems that hold them back from doing what they do best—building relationships and closing loans.

2) Below-Average Customer Retention Rates

People are not moving as often as they used to. Lenders are challenged to keep in touch with their customers on a consistent, ongoing basis, and they risk losing customers to the competition just because they have not communicated often enough.

The more customers a lender has, the harder it can be to keep in touch and protect them from the competition. If a lender finds themselves overwhelmed, the quality of their service can wane. This is a problem, as lenders need to deliver consistent service in order to maintain their customer retention rates.

Today, more than ever before, online reviews sculpt the reputation of lenders. Companies need a system to manage their reputation and facilitate the process of gathering reviews for potential borrowers to read. Building social proof is necessary for loan officers, especially with millennial homebuyers.

3) Lackluster Lead Generation

Growth is essential to a lender’s success. While many lenders use lead-generation technology, few are utilizing its full potential.

Without consistent lead generation, a lender’s audience can dwindle, sales margins will decline, and growth could stagnate. Lenders know how important lead generation is, but they are often not happy with the quality of leads they are generating.

4) Staying Up-to-Date With Regulation and Compliance

There is no shortage of rules and regulations that lenders need to be familiar with, and this complex web affects how lenders communicate with their customers. Even for the most experienced lenders, these rules can become confusing.

Today’s lenders must remain focused on ensuring their mortgage marketing is up-to-date and compliant.

How Mortgage CRM Technology Can Help

The lending business is an environment of change. Change can make staying informed and competitive a difficult process. This doesn’t always have to be the case, though. With the right mortgage CRM, lenders can let technology help improve their day-to-day routines, and ultimately, their customers’ experience. Here’s how.

1) Streamlining Loan Officer Productivity

When a lending business embraces CRM software, their loan officers’ productivity is bound to improve. CRM automation technology removes the manual work of managing customer data, prospecting to win new business, and staying in front of past customers. Without needing to remember, or spending time creating messages and sending them, lenders are able to keep in touch with their contacts.

This increased productivity helps with job satisfaction, as loan officers can drive more closings without extra effort on their part.

2) Automatic Marketing to Prospects, Referral Partners, and Past Customers

Loan officers usually have their hands full. Lenders need to be able to streamline workloads and automate communications so they can close more loans. That’s what CRM software is for.

By providing loan officers with a CRM that sends automated mortgage marketing, lenders will be able to:

– Nurture customer relationships
– Keep in touch with their sphere of influence and referral partners
– Generate quality leads and referrals
– Receive customer feedback, testimonials, and reviews
– Loan officers don’t have time to send out birthday cards, loan anniversary cards, holiday greetings, emails, newsletters, or requests for referrals. When these marketing activities are automated, loan officers can focus on following up with the leads that are generated.

Post-closing customer satisfaction surveys are critical and should be sent by a third party to ensure timely and honest feedback. A mortgage CRM can automate the surveys and aid in reputation management. In addition, surveys should generate your net promoter score and allow for continuous improvement to the customer experience.

3) Lead Generation Made Easy

If lenders want to grow their business, they need a healthy supply of mortgage leads flowing into their sales pipeline. With CRM software, you can generate exclusive leads by nurturing customer relationships, automating marketing tasks, and more.

CRM software allows lenders to generate higher-quality leads faster than ever. This not only helps loan officers grow their pipeline, but saves them from needing to look for leads themselves. The less time they need to spend generating leads, the more time they can spend building trust with face-to-face meetings.

Quality leads are the key to any company’s success. Incorporating a mortgage CRM software into your efforts can help streamline your lead generation, nurturing, and conversion processes.

4) Ensuring Compliance With Technology

Compliance with mortgage industry regulations is non-negotiable. With mortgage CRM, lenders can ensure that their data is kept in a SOC compliant database. It can also provide lenders with a competitive advantage over others in the industry, as it helps them ensure that everyone within their organization follows the same rules. A mortgage CRM can save time and stress with compliance matters.

Without the right technology, lenders won’t be able to grow their business and remain competitive. With a mortgage CRM, however, lenders can generate leads, maintain fruitful relationships with those leads, and then convert those leads into valued, long-term customers.

By streamlining lender productivity, automating their marketing, and generating better leads faster than ever before, CRM software can be the key tool a company needs to catapult them into a future of success.

About the Author

Kirk King is President of Halo Programs, Inc. and past President of the Michigan Mortgage Lenders Association, Southeast Chapter. Halo Programs helps residential lenders grow with easy-to-use mortgage CRM software called MyCRMDashboard. Lenders gain efficiency and generate leads with automated marketing based on Continuity’s 45+ years of experience.