Dustin DiMisa reflects on his first month of the Consumer Connect project

Dustin DiMisa reflects on his first month of the Consumer Connect project and fills us in on some of his take aways thus far…

This week marks a full month of the Consumer Connect initiative. It has truly been a learning experience for me.

Dustin DiMisa’s Biggest Realization: Consumers have very little time in their day for a 5 minute phone call, much less a strenuous loan process.

The one thing that was most surprising to me was the amount of time the consumers have to speak with me over the phone. They are often so busy that they only have a few minutes to offer me.

From what I have experienced so far, the calls will either go one of two ways. The consumer has a good amount of time to speak, around 20 minutes or more, and they want to go into great detail about all of their frustrations in the home loan process. They would even like to schedule more calls to catch up in the future and hear updates about the company and Consumer Connect. The larger portion of consumers, however, can only offer me around 5 minutes to have a quick conversation, and I can feel them rushing the call.

Dustin DiMisa’s Biggest Takeaway Thus Far: Streamlining the home loan process is the biggest priority.

This situation has made me realize that it’s important now more than ever to streamline the mortgage process to save consumers time. The more I listened to consumers over the past month, the thing that seems to waste their time and upset them the most is the piecemeal of conditions. It is very unsettling to consumers to tell them they are approved and then condition the loan for additional documentation.

The biggest stress, complaint, and annoyance of almost everyone I talked to was that they felt as if they were led to believe they were approved and went on their merry way to find a house or close on the one they had found. Then they hit a roadblock that required them to send more documents or get a contractor’s opinion on something that was already thought to be fine. If these consumers rarely have 5 minutes to speak to me, they definitely don’t have 30 minutes to an hour a few time a week to gather more files and send over to their loan officer. And they definitely shouldn’t be taking time out of their day to follow up to make sure documents were received and the process was still moving along.

Making sure original loan conditions are accurate and thorough is paramount to streamlining a better experience for consumers. Open communication and quick check in calls or emails from the lenders side rather than the borrower’s side is also something that will help consumers save time.

Moving Into Month Two of Consumer Connect Initiative

I am excited to begin month 2 of calls and learn even more about what other glaring pain points consumers are experiencing and what new processes and services I can implement to help them.