Refining the Homeowner Experience
 |
Life should be simple for your homeowners. We believe it should be easy for them to learn about their mortgage, to conduct business like paying bills seamlessly and to get help however, whenever and wherever they choose. You’ve heard us talk about how this mindset is all part of our commitment to providing the very best customer experience for your homeowners. But it’s not a one and done. We’re constantly refining and fine-tuning how we serve homeowners, including strategically making investments in order to adjust to their needs. |
CenNetTM, Our Homeowner Website
It’s an attitude reflected in investments like our CenNet homeowner website, which launched last year. CenNet puts homeowners in control of their loans with information about payments, escrow, taxes, insurance, loan management tools and more.
We’re constantly building on the foundation established with CenNet’s launch, and have been excited to educate homeowners about the tools at their disposal. In late March, we started an awareness campaign that periodically displays a reminder message to homeowners who have yet to sign up for autopay or paperless on CenNet. These homeowners receive a pop-up immediately after signing in that informs them that these features are available to them, and encourages the homeowner to finish setting up.
As of August 1, we’ve increased enrollment in paperless by 372,000 homeowners and autopay by 234,000 since the periodic reminder campaign began. Now, nearly one-third of homeowners have enrolled in paperless and nearly 45% in autopay, up from 21% and 41%, respectively, at the start of 2022. Both figures are higher than the MBA industry average.
IVR and Bots
We’ve also changed our IVR to let homeowners who call us know that they can self-serve at any time on CenNet. And our bots have bolstered our self-serve options, with an average of 145,000 homeowner interactions — approximately 80% of homeowners who interact with one of our bots no longer need to speak with a live representative.
Efforts like this mean people who need to call us don’t need to wait as long to speak with a representative. In April, the average homeowner waited only 30 seconds for their call to be answered, according to a survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association, almost two full minutes faster than the industry average.
The bottom line is: the more efficient our online offerings, the better servicing experience for both our client partners and their homeowners.
Leveraging Banner Advertisements
We also can help you educate and serve your homeowners, with CenNet’s new banner ad functionality giving you the opportunity to market directly to your homeowners.
With banner ads, we can place a message of your choosing at the top of the homeowner website. These banners can be displayed to all your homeowners or to a targeted group of loans. As the campaign progresses, the audience can be refreshed, based on data, to help with targeting.
One campaign, which displayed messaging about refinancing to all of a client’s homeowners last September, generated a 0.8% lead rate. This is better than the average click-through rate on a Google Display ad — around 0.5% — despite the lead rate measuring an extra step. Homeowners had to both click the banner (or click-through) and then continue on to act on its messaging and inquire about the offer. We likely could have seen an even higher leads rate had we shown the banner to a targeted list of homeowners more likely to be interested in refinancing their loan.
These targeted campaigns, just like our autopay and paperless reminder initiative, are all part of our effort to enhance the customer experience by thinking like a homeowner. It means we’re able to meet homeowners where they want to conduct business while, at the same time, strive for continual improvement, each and every day.
READ MORE INSIDE THIS ISSUE