As a lender, you have the option to service loans internally and manage all aspects of the borrower experience. However, between compliance requirements and the volume of integrated tasks that need to be done accurately and consistently, servicing requires ongoing substantial investment in staff, training, and quality control. Fortunately, you can achieve even more robust customer service with a 3rd party servicer – without the hassle.
Great Customer Service Leads to Strong Borrower Relationships
Excellent customer service is the bedrock of a strong borrower relationship. It often involves answering the borrower’s questions quickly, resolving issues to their satisfaction with a desired one-call resolution, and ensuring that they interact with friendly professionals.
When you do these things well, your current customers are much more likely to return to you for future borrowing needs. On the other hand, poor customer service can tarnish the reputation you’ve worked hard to build. In addition, research supports a strong link between excellent customer service and the timely payment of loans.
Excellent Customer Service Attracts New Business
An outstanding customer experience not only keeps your current borrowers happy but also helps to attract new ones. After all, a referral from a trusted colleague is often significantly more valuable than any sales pitch.
Further, a study by BrightLocal in 2024 found that 50% of people trust online reviews as much as a recommendation from friends or family. Testimonials and star ratings are particularly important for local markets, but they also impact national brands. In fact, 91% of consumers surveyed said that local branch reviews influence their opinions of large brands. This data suggests that excellent customer service can be a major driver of new business.
Achieve Excellent Customer Service with The Right Partner
Loan servicing is a specialized field, and if you are like many lenders, you may not have the expertise or bandwidth to provide regulatory-compliant servicing on your own. Fortunately, you can turn to an experienced loan servicing partner to handle the day-to-day tasks while retaining control over borrower relationships.
The right partner will offer excellent customer service as well as co-branding and white label options to keep your name in front of borrowers throughout the life of the loan. The best loan servicers will even provide better customer service than you could achieve on your own.
How AmeriNat Has Achieved Excellence in Customer Service
When choosing a loan servicer, you should look for a company with decades of experience and a strong compliance program. However, your search shouldn’t end there. You should also seek a partner that can articulate how they drive successful customer relationships on your behalf.
At AmeriNat, we provide outstanding customer service for your borrowers using a three-pronged approach. It includes hiring the right people, empowering them to do their best work, and consistently retraining to keep up with changing borrower needs.
We Hire the Right People
The right representatives make all the difference in borrower interactions. We choose to hire people with proven critical thinking skills who are energetic and friendly. However, the most important quality we seek in customer service representatives is empathy. We believe that empathy is the key to connecting with borrowers and treating them with the personalized care and respect that they deserve.
We Empower Customer Service Representatives to Solve Problems
It isn’t enough to only have the right people. Those people must also have the tools and support they need to successfully assist borrowers without a need to transfer their call. That is why we developed our internal systems to empower our employees to solve borrower issues quickly – often in a single conversation.
We Constantly Retrain and Improve
Along with empowering employees, we believe that there is always room to improve. That is why we monitor many metrics like the time it takes for a borrower to reach the right person and how quickly their issue is resolved. Our teams also frequently review customer interactions and work together to devise new strategies to better assist them. You’ll even find our upper management reviewing phone calls to confirm our outstanding level of service.
As you choose a loan servicer, keep in mind that the right partner should make life easier for both you and your borrowers. In turn, you can drive more business and improve the performance of your portfolio.
Choose AmeriNat for Excellent Customer Service
When you partner with AmeriNat, our team will handle the day-to-day servicing tasks with a smile to help make the most of your ongoing customer relationships. Additionally, our white-label and co-branded servicing options allow you to harness positive interactions to support your reputation and protect your relationships with borrowers.
We have over five decades of experience servicing loans and our team currently services loans with more than $11 billion in principal balance for over 300 happy clients. To see how our vast experience and modern technology can help your organization succeed, contact us today.