This month we were fortunate to be featured by the The Credit Union Times, to share how Credit Unions can strike the ideal balance between an online digital mortgage experience and personalized concierge-level service, to succeed in today’s market.
The digital transformation of the mortgage experience has been well underway since the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic only further accelerated this process.
Credit Unions are uniquely positioned where, if they combine their inherent asset of a genuinely individualized customer experience, with strategic investments in technology they can expand their market share.
The ROI on Digitizing Your Member Experience
The digital transformation seen at Navy Federal Credit Union is a great example of how Credit Unions can make these changes effectively. Navy Federal began modernizing their branch experiences, by first doing some very small-scale tests of different technology offerings to see where the most impactful opportunities were, and then leveraged those insights to maximize their investments. The key objective they kept in mind throughout the process was how does this new product serves our members to improve their overall experience. This simple framework was applied across the board from new mobile apps to updated web experiences.
Your Title Partner’s Impact on Your Loan Cycle
Building digital, transparent customer experiences is a critical step towards growing Credit Union membership for younger generations. Right now, the average age of a Credit Union member is 47, 10 years older than the average American. Furthermore, this is a critical growth channel since once a young person joins a Credit Union, they tend to become a lifelong member, driving long-term value. Credit Unions should view acquiring Millennials and Gen Z as a high growth priority.
Acquiring a younger audience requires re-engineering the customer experience around digital offerings. 60% of millennials and Gen-Z indicated that they would switch their financial services account to a provider with a better digital experience.
Re-engineering your customer’s experience requires you to step into their shoes and breakdown the workflow to track every touchpoint you have with them. Once you have taken this step, identify areas where you can leverage automation to drive efficiency in your workflow, freeing up your member facing team to invest more time and energy on building customer relationships. Make sure to build automation around your customer, not around your team. In addition, identify ways to track the performance of your internal teams and vendors to ensure that your technology investment resources are being utilized for maximum impact.
Finally, 84% of surveyed Millennials and Gen-Z highly value transparency. Fortunately, Credit Unions already do a good job of being transparent, especially compared to other financial institutions, so this should be a continuation of what you are already doing today.
Title Partner Impact
Your title partner impacts 50% of your loan cycle. Sometimes this process is slow and cumbersome, which can result in customer churn, lower NPS scores, negative referrals, and other sub-optimal outcomes. Therefore, it is crucial to know where your title vendor can help drive better outcomes, and ensure they are aligned with your vision of creating an outstanding customer experience.
77% of satisfied customers tend to refer your business, while efficiency gains from automation in title, escrow, and closing, can increase the servicing capacity of your team by 18%. Finding a title partner who can be a strategic partner versus a transactional vendor can feed into this feedback loop and drive membership growth.
It pays dividends to have a title partner aligned with your customer-first vision. To learn more, check out the webinar replay here.
