Part one of a two-part series by Tom Ward, President, Majestic Mortgage from his new book entitled, "The Empathy Effect". It's all about his real-life experiences in the mortgage business and how he built a successful company with "empathy" as the cornerstone. Purchase his book at www.TheEmpathyEffect.com.
Stayed tuned for Part II, "The Autopsy of a Loan".
Rehearsal (re-hur-sel): 1) the act or process of practicing in preparation for a performance, especially for a public performance. 2) verbal repetition or recital.
One Friday evening, I'm getting ready to leave the office for the wedding of an employee, when the latest batch of surveys lands on my desk.
"I'll just read these before I go," I tell myself, slicing open the first envelope.
In response to the question "What would you recommend that we improve?" the first card reads, "everything was great, if only we could have received our closing figures earlier. We had to rush to get cashiers check at the last minute and it was a little bit stressful. But other than that, we would still recommend you."
I make a mental note of the comment and then open the second envelope. This one is from another customer, about a different loan officer, but it says almost exactly the same thing. The customer's experience was great for the most part, "But we wish we would have received the closing figures earlier. We got them at nine o'clock in the morning for an eleven o'clock closing and had to scramble to get the cashiers check on time. We would suggest that you do something to improve that part of the process.
Ouch, two in a row. I open the third envelope. And, I'll be damned if it doesn't say the same thing as the first two. That's three customers in a row complaining about the stress we cause them by not being more empathetic to their situations.
The easy solution would be to simply say, "Oh, well, last-minute closing figures are the norm in this industry and there's nothing I can do about it." But I can't just sit back and accept the status quo. The last thing I want to do is create stress for my customers. I'm feeling ashamed, like I've done something morally wrong. The problem is still vexing my mind as I pack up and go home to change for the wedding.
I drive alone to a neighborhood church that sits among the houses on a quite residential street in Winnetka, one of Chicago's affluent North Shore suburbs. As I walk in and find a seat in the pews, the quandary of the closing figures is still wearing on my mind. How can I solve this problem?
The wedding starts. A young woman from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra begins singing, accompanied by a man playing the piano. Right on cue, a couple of kids come down the aisle, dropping rose petals on the silk floor runner. The ceremony is proceeding flawlessly. The groom appears through a side door, followed by the bridesmaids. Then, to the chords of "Here Comes the Bride," the bride walks doen the aisle at exactly the right moment. Her dad lifts her veil and shakes the groom's hand. It's a perfectly executed performance.
I'm thinking to myself, "How can these people orchestrate this wedding so well, but we can't pull off a simple thing like getting customers their documents sooner before closing?"
And then the answer hit me like a line drive: "Wait a minute - they practiced the wedding the night before, at the rehearsal!" Everyone walked through their roles in advance. The singer had probably been practicing for weeks.
As I sat there in the little church, it finally dawned on me that we were sending our customers to the single, largest transaction of their lives without rehearsing it beforehand. As a company, we had not stopped to think about what the customers' experience would be like under the conditions that we were creating for them. There was no "empathy". At the last minute, we were telling customers to go get a cashiers check for a huge amount of money - a figure that we couldn't explain to them until the closing had already started and the atmosphere had become heated and stressful. The pressure during a closing is intense. You're in a frantic race to resolve any disagreements and sign all the documents within the alloted time, as if an hourglass has been flipped over and the sand is quickly running out. How would I feel if I were the customer in that situation and my mortgage company hadn't given me the right numbers until the last minute?
Not too happy!
We weren't the only company dropping this fly ball - no one in the mortgage business rehearsed closings or provided early figures. I wanted to reduce the customer's stress and give them a better experience. So just as the wedding party had practiced the ceremony, I was determined to make it company policy that we would rehearse every closing with the customer three business days before the closing.
In direct response to our customers' suggestions, we worked our rear ends off to give the title company the figures three days before the closing. But we soon heard them blaming us for their own procrastination. When the customer would be asking for the figures - the title company would tell them "Sorry, but your mortgage company hasn't given us those numbers yet." The aggravated customer would call us next, asking why we were late with this crucial information. After all, we "rehearsed" with them, told them what was going to happen, and of course we knew we had sent them the figures, but they just hadn't prepared the HUD-1 yet. That was how their system operated.
Stuck in inertia, the title companies weren't going to change. If we wanted to improve our customers' experience, we would have to do something different ourselves...so here's what he did!
Subscribers can continue this article now and read what Tom did to solve the customers' problem and how he got the whole company behind his innovative idea! (If you are not already subscribed, click here to subscribe now, and begin taking advantage of 300+ articles of sales & marketing ideas for today's top loan originators - and receive your free gift(s)!)
Read More
