Providing A Service

Written By: Bonnie Wilt-Hild
Senior DE Underwriter & NAMP Instructor

As we know, the mortgage lending industry is a service related industry. Ultimately, we as mortgage professionals profit when the service we provide exceeds that of our peers. Outstanding service determines both the quality and quantity of business that we generate. Now the question: What exactly constitutes outstanding service?

Very recently my supervisor met with our staff and insisted that the quality of service that we were providing our broker clients was less than excellent; in fact, he thought it was less than satisfactory. In his opinion, service with a smile was not enough to maintain our current business partner base as well as expand it. Of course we all think he is not only unreasonable but way off base, after all, we service our business partners very well as far as we are concerned and there lies the problem. Defining quality service is very subjective and defined completely by opinion; there is no black and white rule.

Last week I was on vacation. I spent the week with my family in Ocean City, Maryland, a nice little beach resort complete with boardwalk and the Atlantic Ocean. As part of the tradition we always go to the boardwalk first so the kids can get on the rides, eat Thrashers French fries and buy junk trinkets and true to tradition, that’s where our vacation began.

During the week we spend there each year, I always purchase beach shots of all my children, the OC beach photographers walk the beach all day each day and take the pictures which usually end of in scopes or on key chains and on my desk of course. This year was no different, I fully anticipated having those pictures taken, however, when I was on the boardwalk I passed an old time photo studio and decided it would be fun to have a photo of all of them dressed up as gangsters or something.

So we decided that before we left the boardwalk that afternoon we would have that photo taken as well. Well as you can imagine, the kids are teenagers now and have a tendency to wander off and by the end of the afternoon when it was time to have the picture taken I had collected all but one of them, my son, who decided to do the Zipper one more time. The rest of the kids and I were at the photo studio and my son called from his cell phone saying that he was on his way, and would be there in just a few minutes.

The rest of the kids got dressed in the gangster get ups and when my son arrived, the photographer told me that it was too late to include him because he had another group waiting. He had not yet taken the photograph and quite frankly my youngest son was still getting his costume on. The photographer said that didn’t matter, he wasn’t waiting and regardless of if I wanted the photo or not, I still had to pay for it because he had already spent enough time getting the others ready. As I stared at him in disbelief, he took the photo and told me that the photo would be $39.99. I was mad. The service was horrible and that was just the beginning.

The next night we ended up at a restaurant, waiting for ½ hour for someone to come over and at least take a drink order from us. When the waitress walked up to the table next to us and asked if they needed anything and then walked away again without taking our order we left thinking the service was horrible. We actually ended up at the restaurant next door to the one we left, they seated us right away, we had beers in 3 minutes flat and the staff was a blast, friendly and courteous. The food was excellent and due to the great service they provided we ended up not only having a great time but very appreciative of how welcome they made us feel.

When I left the restaurant I began to think about the conference room conversation the week before with old Atilla and decided he was right. Adequate is simply not enough because my definition of adequate may not be the same as that of my brokers or borrowers.

Ok, so what is point am I trying to make? Underwriting is pretty much the end all - catch all of every mortgage operation. Without us loans do not get approved and if they don’t get approved they don’t close. If they don’t close, the company makes no money; the borrowers do not own homes and so on and so forth. It’s sometimes hard for underwriters to identify themselves with the individuals in the company that are on the front line of customer service and by this I mean the originators and processors.

After all they are the people that talk to the clients, the real estate agents and business partners so therefore should be the people responsible for making sure that the company image stays untarnished right? Wrong. Without the support of the underwriting staff, quick and expeditious turn times and availability, the front room support staff cannot provide any type of service let alone quality service. We as underwriters need to make ourselves available to our support staff and provide to them the kind of quality service that we ourselves would expect if we were apply for a mortgage or purchasing any other type of service. We need to muster all of the self control we have (YES, sometimes it takes that) to answer all of the questions quickly and accurately and get the loans turned around as fast as possible so that the guys and girls on the front lines can provide service above and beyond that of their peers and then we all win.

Now with that said, if anyone will spending time on the east coast this summer and want some outstanding steamed crabs done only like they do it on the Chesapeake Bay, try Outriggers in Fenwick Island DE, they rock!

About the Writer. As an NAMP staff writer, Bonnie serves as a senior instructor for FHA Online University as well maintains a full-time job as Senior DE Underwriter for a major banking institution. If you would like to become a writer for NAMP, please email us at: blog@mortgageprocessor.org.