What your customers really think

And what exactly is good customer service?

Generally, when there’s an important industry issue, we like to consult brokers, aggregators, lenders and associations to find the answers. This time, though, we thought we’d go straight to the public.

After all, who knows more about customer service than customers?

We should stress that the five broking clients we interviewed were all sourced independently; none of these people were recommended to us by anyone from the industry. To make sure that they spoke forthrightly, we assured them that we wouldn’t reveal the identity of their broker.

However, we insisted they provide their own name so we could be certain they stood behind their comments. The borrowers were asked why they turned to a broker, what their broker did right and what their broker did wrong.

Here, in their own words, are their compliments and complaints.

Borrower 01: Jessica Cave

What the broker did right:

•  Visited Jessica after hours
•  Outsmarted her bank
•  Followed up after settlement

I went to a broker because I thought they would give me a bigger picture about all my options. I was looking at buying my first home and I really had no idea about how to get a loan, what loan would be best and how much the banks might lend me.

I did a Google search and filled in an online form asking someone to phone me to make an appointment. Mike contacted me and came out to my parents’ house after hours, which was good, because I was working.

Mike gave me an idea of how much I could borrow.

He also explained the different types of loans and which lenders would be most suitable given I did not have the 20 per cent deposit and also because I wanted to buy a small property.

Mike gave me advice about the most suitable lender and I completed the paperwork to get pre-approval so I could get stuck into my property searching. I found the property I wanted but it was difficult because of its size and the lender did not approve the loan.

I asked Mike whether there was anyone who would lend to me for that property size. He said he didn’t think so but that he would double-check. He also explained the option of a guarantor to me as another option to buy the property. Thankfully, he came back to me and told me he had found a lender. Strangely, it was owned by the same bank that declined the loan in the first place.

I felt like he really went out of his way to help: I had the property under contract and I had to keep getting extensions through the vendor to keep it off the market while we completed the paperwork for this bank. It seemed to me he did everything from his end to get it through as quickly as possible.

He was then available for questions once the property settled. He would keep in contact by email and ask me how everything was going. I got the impression that if something needed to be changed, he would have been more than happy to help. Occasionally, I get emails from his office.

So the follow-up hasn’t been overbearing. I’ve always felt I can always go back to him because that link has been maintained. I recommended Mike to a friend that was looking at buying a property in the same area.

Borrower 02: Anna Malcolm

What the broker did wrong:

• Displayed poor organisational skills
• Failed to learn from her mistakes
• Caused enormous stress and inconvenience

We went to our broker, Danielle, in January. I’d sold my last property and bought a new one that was more suitable for having two children. 

I was heavily pregnant when we decided to buy the new place and when I first met Danielle my second baby was only 48-hours old. I wanted to use a broker rather than go through a bank because it meant I didn’t have to shop around to find a good deal. 

When we first met Danielle, everything seemed fine. We explained we wanted to clear all our debts, including a personal loan my partner had, and then take out a 95 per cent mortgage. She gave us our options and then got us to sign some bank paperwork then and there. She said she used to work for that bank before she became a broker.

Then, every time we spoke with her in the days after, she kept forgetting the $12,000 in sales fees from our previous house and kept forgetting to include that as a cost with the financing.

Danielle went overseas on holiday and forgot to organise the deposit to be sent to the new property. That expired when she was on holiday and she had left no contact details with her company. Nobody could get in contact with the bank to find out what was going on, so I had to spend hours on the phone calling a host of other people, trying to get a hold of someone to help me get a deposit bond.

Four or five days before settlement, Danielle suddenly told us that this bank doesn’t do 95 per cent mortgages to new credit customers; they only do 90 per cent. It meant we couldn’t pay out the personal loan unless I returned to work, so having both a mortgage and a personal loan has put us in financial stress. Then our first payment was over a week late because Danielle forgot to send in the direct debit form.

The bank has been fine. It’s the broker who messed everything up. I reported Danielle and her company to the Credit Ombudsman Service in May, because the response I’d been getting from them wasn’t suitable.

Borrower 03: Mitchell Burge

What the broker did right:

• Positioned himself as a finance expert
• Focused on Mitchell’s long-term needs
• Held his hand through stressful situations

I first used Ross in 2012 after he was recommended to me by a couple of friends. That was the first time I’d used a broker. It’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. We’ve done nine house purchases in just under two years and set up a self-managed super fund as well.

Because we leverage, the houses have been bought very well. We haven’t separated with any funds. Each house we’ve bought has made that much equity, we’ve leveraged off it to get to the next, and we’ve refinanced numerous times. It’s been an aggressive approach, but although it sounds risky, it’s been extremely successful.

I couldn’t have done all this with a bank. Let me explain why: my requirements keep changing and the loans I need are very different, especially when you’re dealing with self-managed super funds or company loans. If you’ve got every investment and account through one bank and you ever fall on hard times, they can foreclose on you very easily, so what you do is diversify.

Ross can get me any lender I need. It means I’ve got a much bigger pool to pick from and it means I’m diversified. And you don’t want to go into 10 different banks. If you have a broker, it means you’ve just got one contact. I used to go through the banks directly, but I found I don’t get a better rate than when I go through a broker. In fact, a broker actually gets me slightly better rates, because the banks have to compete for a broker’s business.

Still, it hasn’t all been good. The worst experience I’ve had was trying to buy a property with my self-managed super fund. They’re very complicated and there’s really only one lender that handles self-managed super funds.

They work to the beat of their own drum: you can’t rush them, you can’t contact them, and they don’t care about your settlement deadlines. Luckily I was able to call on some other funds to settle, otherwise I would’ve lost a considerable amount of money. But that was nothing to do with Ross. 

If I was going through a bank and didn’t have the weight of Ross behind me, it probably would’ve fallen through, because they were impossible to deal with.

That’s why I will only ever go through a broker. I keep going back and will keep going back. I’ve recommended Ross to heaps of people – to more people than I can count.

Borrower 04: Sarah Rogers

What the broker did wrong:

• Cost Sarah money
• Lacked adequate product knowledge
• Showed poor attention to detail

My first experience with a broker was in 2011 when I bought my first property.

I’m from Albury, but I placed a call to a brokerage in Canberra. This brokerage was amazing when it came to strategy advice and structuring for the long term. However, because they were 350 kilometres away, I ended up using my local bank branch instead. 

I returned to that bank in 2012 when I decided to buy my next property. They spoke to me briefly about my plans, but they didn’t really discuss the best way to structure an investment property, so I ended up going to a broker. The broker was amazing because he did all the work to get the structure right and make sure that I had the borrowing capacity.

Having said that, I did end up going with the bank again because it seemed like the easier option.

By the time it came to my third loan in 2013, I decided to go through a local broker. Unfortunately, this broker stuffed up my loan. She put all the properties at principle and interest on the mortgage, which you don’t want because you want to keep your tax deductible debt high and pay off your non-tax deductible debt.

She joined them all together in one big loan rather than keeping them separate and not securitised. It took me a month to clean up the mess and get all the properties separated again and make sure they had interest-only with offset accounts. It really showed me the difference between having a good broker with foresight against someone who just wanted to get a loan signed off. 

The broker initially seemed to know what she was talking about. I got the record of debt advice and that was all fine, so she obviously knew what I wanted, but then she applied for the loan incorrectly.

That mistake was costing me $870 per month. The broker ended up losing her job over the matter.

I expect to make another property purchase – and I’ll definitely go through a broker when I do.

With my last property, I not only spoke to the broker, I also spoke to the bank, and they weren’t sure if they could’ve organised a loan for me. 

They were really conservative in their approach, but the broker, for all her faults, was a bit more creative and worked with me to find out how we could make the deal happen.

Borrower 05: Alex Haddad

What the broker did right:

• Explained the entire mortgage process clearly
• Stood by Alex during settlement
• Demonstrated excellent product knowledge

I had been to a bank and the whole process was confusing.

They would take my details, pass me on to somebody else, then a different person would call, I would then be told to speak to another person and then I would wait around to be called back. There was no communication within the bank, so I turned in desperation to a broker.

Tom was actually the third broker I tried. With the first two, I walked into their offices but nobody was there. With Tom, I walked in, and because I had everything ready after visiting the bank, he was able to process my application immediately. It was a really easy process: he put all the details into the computer and pretty much did everything for me.

He ran through his fees, he ran through how much commission he would get. It was so simple. He gave me excellent personal service – I would rate it 10 out of 10.

Because he was his own boss and running his own business, he did more than the banks would do. He also went out of his way to make sure that the loan was coming through at a good time, because obviously I was stressing out about the finance coming through because I had settlement coming through. He even offered to do the settlement for me because he knew how stressed I was.

The first time I used Tom was for two investment properties. After the settlement, he made a follow-up call to make sure that everything was going well.

Five months later, I went back to Tom so I could buy another investment property.

In my book, he did everything right. That’s why I’ve recommended him to my friends.

I tell people he’s a very good mortgage broker and will do everything right by you. He knows how to help people with different situations.

He knows all the lenders back to front and he’s built a connection with them, so he can push through a mortgage if he has to.

Brokers fire back

If clients are going to go on the attack, we thought it only fair to give brokers the chance to reveal their pet hates regarding borrowers. Surnames have been excluded to protect the guilty!

I love my job, but one thing I hate is when clients renege on the deal at loan contract stage. That comes after I’ve taken time out of my busy day to speak with the client on the phone to qualify the lead, carry out a servicing assessment, discover the client’s short-term, medium-term and long-term lending needs, fulfil my compliance obligations, put together a list of loan options, collect supporting documents and complete the application. I then organise a bank valuation, confirm formal approval, have loan contracts prepared and organise a further meeting to go through the finer details. Including travel time and time on phone to the client and lender, this process can amount to between 15–20 hours work. To lose a deal at this stage is frustrating, costly and rather ignorant on the client’s behalf. This recently happened to me and the client was in a sales role in the financial services industry, so to my mind the client should have known better.” 

Phil

When potential clients just ask about rate it is annoying because getting a home loan is so much more than rate. I don’t blame potential customers, though, as the banks brainwash them into thinking home loans are all about rate when in fact getting a home loan is about being educated on different products, eg. offset accounts, split loans and redraw. Also, every client has a different scenario and you can’t quote a rate without knowing more about them.

George

My biggest pet hate is new clients who come to me to shop around for them and get them the cheapest rate. They act like they are planning to use me to arrange the loan and then they go back to their bank – often one of the banks I have given them a good quote from – and use the information to get the best rate.

Suzanne

Mostly, I really enjoy contact with borrowers. Sometimes, however, I receive a referral to a potential new client where there is an element of desperation about them: they need to complete a refinance quickly to pay out an obligation that is already overdue, or the loan application they submitted three weeks ago with their bank has just been declined and they have 48 hours left on their finance period on their purchase contract. I’ll often stop whatever else I am working on to meet with the client, reassuring them that I will take care of things for them – only to then wait another week for them to get their required support documentation to me!

Troy

Some clients don’t understand that being a broker or lender is extremely demanding and we all deal with many calls each day. It can be frustrating when a client sends through a document for their application, and then in the next hour wonders why they haven’t heard back from the bank regarding their approval. Even though you explain that it takes the bank four hours just to ‘image’ a document to get into a queue, they still are under the impression that their file is going to be picked up and tended to immediately.

Karina

My biggest pet hate is when you tell a prospective borrower in advance what documents they will need but they still haven’t provided them by the time I want to prepare and submit their application. To make matters worse, generally when these borrowers do get their documents ready, they provide them in a series of emails over a few days and don’t scan them clearly. This really annoys me, because I tell all prospective clients that I have a portable scanner that I bring to appointments so I can scan documents myself in a clear format and as one complete scan.

Greg

Five tips for great customer service

Empower Wealth Advisory won the Best Customer Service – Office category at this year’s Australian Broking Awards. Chief executive Ben Kingsley shares his top five tips for great customer service

1. Personal touches

To beat the big guys in the market, you need to differentiate yourself from their big brand messages. The best way is to emphasise what they can’t do or don’t do very well, which is the personal touches.

2. Systemise your service offering

Personalising your service offering requires a lot of client contact time, so you are going to need to find, and keep developing, business efficiencies. As a starting point, look for automation where you can or templates you can then tailor.

3. Add value

We work to a value formula where ‘value = benefit over cost’. Consumers need to see value in your service proposition. Sure, as a mortgage broker, you might offer your services for no charge to the consumer, but so does everybody else. You and your business need to clearly show their value to the client. You must strive to add as must value as possible, and then show clients how this added value will benefit them.

4. Set client expectations

Some loan applications will need extra work with the lender to get them over the line. Be open and transparent about this with the client upfront as it will work in your favour every time.

5. Communicate

Our customer service feedback surveys tell us that our clients value our regular communication. Keeping in touch with them as much as possible – even if there is nothing new to tell them – tells them you are on top of things and you are working hard for them.

Be a ‘seller’ not a ‘teller’

Customer service expert Keith Abraham reveals how to uncover your client’s buying motive

Most people have five buying motives: price, service, quality, convenience or speed.

With price, people want to say they got a bargain. With service, people want to feel like they will be taken care of during and after the sale. People who buy on quality want to make sure they get a reliable product and a reputable brand. Some people focus on convenience – they’ll choose the person who is just around the corner or open at the right time. Others prioritise speed and are willing to pay extra to get their hands on something faster.

When brokers meet new people, they have to identify which of those five motives the clients fit into and tailor their message accordingly. That means asking the right questions.

Struggling brokers tend to be ‘tellers’ – people who just recite a list of features and benefits they can offer clients. Successful brokers are ‘sellers’ – people who make a point of explaining to clients that they want to understand their individual needs.

One great question is this: “What’s most important for you when you deal with a mortgage broker?” People will reply with a value – they’ll say they want convenience or speed or good customer service.

The broker should then follow up with a product that fits that motive.

When brokers can’t figure out their client’s motivation, they try to tick all five boxes when they make their pitch. So they run the risk of suggesting the wrong product and making the client feel like they’re not being properly understood. That’s why some clients are hard work – they’ve already been burned by another broker who failed to understand their buying motive.

There are also those clients who won’t respond to phone calls and emails. Why not? It’s either not a high enough priority or they’re not organised.

One thing I know about brokers is that they can handle a yes and they can handle a no, but they can’t handle a maybe. The only way to get around non-responsive people is to have a clear-cut policy. For example, follow-up three times and only three times, and then move on.

Maybe they’ll get back to you, maybe they won’t, which is why you need to make sure you’ve always got enough leads in your pipeline.