We've scoured the internet researching the most common complaints and pain points that lenders are currently experiencing. To explore both pain points and solutions, we've explored not just what lenders had to say, but borrowers as well. To lead change in our industry, we need to work together to not only innovate but fuel success on all aspects of what we do.
To better understand the challenges we face, we've created a three-part series that explores factors impacting the Lending process that you might not be considering and how Cirrus can help solve these obstacles.
Why is this important?
In early 2019, Ignyte looked at the way consumers use reviews to make decisions. A staggering 93% of people say online reviews impact their buying decisions, which is huge when you realize that potential customers already know a lot about your before they ever have the first contact. It was also noted that 90% of people actually take the time to read online reviews before visiting a business.
Avoiding public complaints on social media and review sites can be tough. It should also be noted that it takes more than just excellent customer service to achieve this. Negative reviews can create a virtual plague that significantly impacts organic leads coming into your pipeline.
In this three-part series, we will explore what our research uncovered as the most often seen complaints and how Cirrus can help you recover and best of all, move past them.
The Plague of Poor Communication
The benefits of excellent communication and the creation of multiple touch points can quickly solve issues surrounding poor communication. Time after time, this is the single most common complaint in the lending process. This is because the back and forth between lenders and borrowers can create uncertainty. When calls and emails are not returned within reasonable timeframes, it's often because the process has fallen through the cracks.
Discussion forums are rich with complaints that lenders did not communicate well, and the people caught between the lender and borrower(s) often feel the brunt of the frustration. Considering that both the lending and borrowing process are greatly enhanced by repeat business, procedures must be put in place to ensure not only that communication happens but when it should happen.
If you have new business leads that are coming in every day, they are competing with other daily communications. It can be challenging to manage a constant flow of emails, text messages, and conversations in virtual communication tools like Slack. If you are not feeling the pinch of this, consider how many emails the average person receives per day while at work. Between 2014 and 2018, "the average office worker received about 90 emails a day and sent around 40 business emails daily". Multiply this by 20 employees and your offices are fielding 1,800 emails within your organization. When you see those numbers, you can understand where communication can fail.
One way to manage the load created by mass amounts of conversations is the Cirrus checklist. The checklist is designed to let you implement what needs to be on the checklist per your standard operating procedures. Based on the things we know are standard in our industry makes this a must for any lender. Our checklist not only helps you see what documents you need but where you are in the process of completing the tasks required to process the loan. Creating reminders and due dates for both follow-up and due dates easily alerting those managing the checklist that something has been forgotten.
Best of all, it's detachable from the documents themselves. This means managers can curate the checklists and review them to note trends and holes in your organization's processes and then refine them.
Now that you understand the power of using the Cirrus checklist for ensuring communication and document tracking, we'll explore part two of our series and learn about the second obstacle that we discovered.