A lot of discussion about the standardization of the consumer experience on the front end.

There are stories on both ends of the spectrum here. Of course there are stories of borrowers who are contacted by a dozen, overly aggressive lenders. Still, many agreed that the number one complaint that branded Tier 1 lead generators get from consumers is that they were not contacted by all of the lenders they were promised.

Is there anything more damaging to the consumer experience than trigger leads?

Bill Rice, of Kaleidico and our gracious host for this conference, shared with us that his numbers show that the first lender to contact is converting higher… If a lendercan get to a 5th or 7th contact then their application ratio skyrockets. The originators, however, seem to disagree with that, because the 2nd, 3rd, 4th to contact can always undercut the first lender and has the opportinity to further educate the consumer.

Todd from Airfoil had an interesting take. The folks who are on the phone talking to consumers (pre-sales, loan officers, etc…) have never owened a home themselves because most likely they are young and probably renting. But do you need to own a car to sell a car? Mortgage companies provide their LO’s a phone and a desk, but drop the ball when it comes to training.

Mortgage brokers are all fighting over the same leads… They all want the 640 FICO with 75% LTV and a $450k loan amount. So 95% of the mortgage originators are fighting over 1% of the leads. That’s not productive…

To what extent should lead generators/providers be qualifying lead buyers? For most lead generators, almost all of them only care that their lead buyer has the money to buy leads, period. While there is fraud in lead generation, there is fraud at mortgage companies, too. We all know that if a guy is fired from a mortgage company because he is suspected of fraud, he’s probably going to get hired by the company down the street and start calling the lead generators he worked with at the first company. But what role, if any, could a lead generator play in that scenario?

See Also: Improving the Customer Experience? Do We Care?