In 2013, a mortgage broker realized that the lending industry seem to be about 5 to 10 years behind other industries in terms of technology to streamline business operations and build strong client relationships. Mortgage lending and real estate demands agility, mobility, and be anywhere – anytime connectivity – characteristics of the industry to build a strong client base and to be able to collaborate with their peers. This is a business which the agent spends most of their time out of the office, out on the road. To be effective and to properly service clients, brokers and agents need to run their businesses from their smartphones or tablets.
He knew in order to be successful, his brokerage firm couldn’t afford to be attached to a premise-based, traditional phone system. Without wanting to hire an IT person or staff to manage his on-premise system, he wanted a phone system and his business applications to be cloud-based to provide the “anytime-anywhere-any device” functionality and connectivity he and his agents need to serve their clients efficiently.
“We are in a cell-phone driven business and the ability to customize call routing means agents can get their calls wherever-whenever.” In addition, he wanted a system to have a powerful capability to automatically route agent’s calls in order to service their clients efficiently. His agents were able to download an app to their mobile phones to receive and send emails and faxes, join a video conference meeting and conference calls anytime-anywhere. “The bottom line is that clients can reach my agents easily and those clients are much happier with our service.”
In a traditional phone system, the average increase of business in mortgage lending and real estate industry is 3 percent. In a cloud-based phone technology, the average increase in business is 40 to 50 percent thanks in part of the efficiency and functionality of a cloud-based phone technology. The broker also realized the dramatic cost savings over traditional phone system of more than 30 percent.