What do brokers really think of lender customer service?

In our H1 2021 report, released in June, 15% of all the feedback we received about lenders mentioned their customer service. While over 50% of this feedback about customer service was positive, there are three key areas we saw repeatedly mentioned that brokers find frustrating with a lender’s customer service, but are also quick to praise when lenders get it right.

Live chat

Live chat isn’t quite ‘the norm’ as a communication channel for brokers and lenders yet, but when done well, brokers are keen to praise live chat as ‘great’, ‘extremely useful’ and ‘excellent’.

However, brokers criticise a lenders live chat system that they feel doesn’t answer their question, and many brokers cite frustrations with responses of having criteria ‘copy and pasted without any thought as to whether that would actually help.’ Some brokers also commented of long wait times for a live chat, with one broker mentioning there were ‘80+ people in a queue’.

Live chat could be a great way for lenders to utilise their broker teams efficiently to have several conversations on the go at one time, rather than single phone calls, but it’s clear that it needs to be done well and manned by knowledgeable staff.

Being responded to quickly [over the phone]

At the beginning of the pandemic it was understandable that you may have to wait longer than usual for someone to answer the phone as companies had less staff physically in the office and quickly had to set up remote call centres for staff working from home, with all the infrastructure changes and compliance challenges that may involve.

However, in our H1 Benchmark we saw repeated comments across several lenders of long wait times on hold for a broker helpline, with many brokers feeling frustrated with the hour plus wait for some lenders to answer the phone. We also saw general comments from brokers who felt frustrated at being able to get hold of someone, be it BDM or underwriter, to ask a quick question.

Having staff with enough knowledge and accountability

If a broker has made it through to their customer service channel of choice (or indeed, the channel that the lender has made available to them), the next area of friction we see repeated comments on is speaking with a member of staff who has insufficient knowledge of a lender’s policies and criteria and are unable to take ownership and accountability of cases and queries.

Key frustrations from brokers include ‘call centres who talk like they’re reading from a script’, ‘giving out incorrect information’ and not having updates to hand on case progress.

Our Mortgage Lender Benchmark can help lenders identify where their strengths and weaknesses are, providing actionable insight onto the key things that brokers really rate and find frustrating about their proposition and service. In H1 2021 597 brokers shared their feedback with us, making the Mortgage Lender Benchmark the most comprehensive study on lender satisfaction in the industry.

Data collection for our H2 2021 Mortgage Lender Benchmark will open in October and the report will be released in early December.