End-to-end communications
As a spinoff to our real estate agent strategy, we determined that solving for consistent and proactive loan status updates from application to close would improve agents' trust in our ability to serve their clients.
Industry
Mortgage
Timeline
3 months
Role
Service design, co-facilitation
Team
Research, content, business, product
Problem
Lack of communications restrict an agents' ability to serve clients and negatively impact their perceptions of the lender.
Opportunity
Develop a communications blueprint of loan status updates for agents and customers to improve customer and agent satisfaction.
Impact
+106%
agent satisfaction if status updates went well during a transaction
46
agent satisfaction if status updates should be improved
25%
of agents believe that the status updates should be improved
57%
of agents believe that loan status updates is a top lender offering
Known pain points
Effective, timely communication during a loan transaction is a core expectation for agents and customers
Poor communications, especially around last-minute issues, lessen the potential that the lender will be an agent's preferred choice
Customers consistently found requests for info to be excessive, repetitive and poorly communicated, often leading to confusion, delays and stress
Frequent callbacks and follow-ups with home lending advisors and support teams are needed to confirm document receipts, status updates, or next steps
Objectives
Co-design would help us validate that automating loan status updates would solve this gap
We hoped to use co-design with agents and customers to
Learn what key milestones agents and customers expect loan status updates
Ensure that the info we share will be relevant and useful
Understand how the cadence of communications change for sales and operation teams if we automate updates
Chase doesn't tend to send out consistent updates on the status of the loan as compared to other lenders at every step.
Real estate agent
Research and design preparation
I compiled a service blueprint for all outgoing communications and internal processes to identify key milestones
We didn't have one source of truth of all the communications that go out to the customer and agent across sales and operation teams. Through multiple stakeholder interviews and by combing through existing documentation, I was able to organize our communications by channel, sender, system and timing during the transaction.
Creating a service blueprint would ensure that communications would remain feasible within existing operational processes and technological systems.
Co-design workshop
We successfully validated that automating emails would reduce stress and increase confidence for all stakeholders
We confirmed a positive sentiment around automation:
There were no concerns from customers, agents, and HLAs.
There's no such thing as overcommunication for customers and agents.
A steady stream of updates would give agents confidence that their loan is moving forward.
In addition, we revealed extra considerations when automating loan status updates:
Customers needed confirmation that their personal information wouldn't be shared with agents.
Escalations or issues needed to happen via the phone rather than email.
Home lender advisors would need a new cadence of communications with customers if we automate emails.
Learnings
Preferences matter
Although we prioritized emails as a main form of communication, customers and agents have different omnichannel preferences that should be customizable
Politics are inevitable
Creating an end-to-end strategy inevitably involved politics to navigate, especially since some teams didn't want to give up control over their section of the journey
The problem is scale
The greatest strength and challenge of Chase is its size, and any strategy is complex to implement at scale