Paula Tompkins, CEO and founder of ChannelNet, was recently featured in an issue of Mortgage Banking magazine, a real estate finance publication. In the article, “Reinventing the Mortgage Customer Experience,” Tompkins gives practical advice on one of the mortgage industry executive’s top imperatives — reinventing the origination and service delivery.
The how-to article goes into detail on how to accomplish what Tompkins considers the three core steps to reinventing the mortgage customer experience:
- Starting with a strategy and plan that includes a good understanding of the customer’s entire journey, even though it crosses departmental silos.
- Developing the capability to provide a truly unique and personal experience instead of just inserting a name into a mass email.
- Selecting the right information technology (IT) partner and moving away from the less successful implementations by internal resources.
She stresses that lenders need an IT resource that provides strategy, usability, creative and technological capabilities. Other topics include the importance of the content plan (data plan), the customer journey, customer life cycle management, and technology requirements.
One of the big downfalls of the mortgage industry that she cites is the classification of customer data. She says, “Very few mortgage companies take the step to classify their customer data. They find it easier to simply throw a net around all data and dictate that it must be secured. This misstep is one of the reasons why bank cultures are stifled by fear.”
Tompkins recommends making identifying and classifying customer data a foundational step in a company’s compliance and security plan. A cross-functional committee of compliance professionals and business executives working together to determine, based on guidelines, what data must be protected is the best way to inventory and classify customer data.
Read the full article*.
*Mortgage Banking magazine is a members-only publication of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). If you are not a member of the MBA, please contact us for a copy of the article.
