Buying a home? Exciting. Getting a mortgage? Ouch.

In fact, nearly all banks get relatively poor marks from customers when it comes to their mortgage products and processes. The mortgage, long considered a cornerstone of full relationship banking, is one of the largest and most complex financial products many consumers will use. Convoluted mortgage processes create a customer experience that significantly lags that of simpler products, such as credit cards, and can tarnish a consumer’s overall perception of his or her bank. Among customers purchasing only a mortgage, a bank’s overall relationship Net Promoter Score® drops by up to 7 points, new NPS Prism℠ data from Bain & Company shows. Lower loyalty can significantly reduce a customer’s lifetime value to the bank, and affluent customers are particularly sensitive to issues that arise as they obtain a mortgage.

Some banks manage to outperform their peers on the mortgage experience. Yet even for these loyalty leaders, customers who purchase only a mortgage still give the bank lower Net Promoter Scores (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Customers who buy only a mortgage drag down a bank’s overall loyalty score by as much as 7 points

Given the importance of a mortgage in consumers’ lives, as well as to a bank’s standing with its customers, improving the mortgage experience becomes critical. NPS Prism is the ideal benchmarking service to apply to this complex process, providing granular data that enables a bank to understand how it performs at each step in the customer journey.

Using NPS Prism, a bank can analyze and prioritize each episode in the mortgage process—ranging from the application to setting up related services after closing—to determine where it performs well vs. direct competitors and industry leaders, and where it falls short. One bank might excel at advising customers about which mortgage is right for them, but routinely misses deadlines or mishandles logistics at the closing—a classic case of failure in the “last mile.” Another bank that closes without a hitch might have a confusing process for document handling, which means the customer has to repeatedly send the same information and talk with multiple employees before the bank assembles the final mortgage package (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

A bank can unpack its relative performance on each episode in the mortgage process

By uncovering detailed information about each episode in the journey, NPS Prism identifies areas in need of targeted investment in order to improve the overall mortgage experience, earn greater loyalty and optimize customer lifetime value.

Net Promoter^®, Net Promoter System^®, Net Promoter Score^® and NPS^® are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.