CREOVAI blog

How mortgage industry contact centers can deliver a great borrower experience

Madeline Jacobson
Jul 16, 2025
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Let’s face it: homebuyers (or owners) don’t want to call your contact center. For potential borrowers, calling mortgage originators for information can be a daunting experience—especially when they’re preparing to make one of the biggest purchases of their lives. And current borrowers typically only call their mortgage service provider when something has gone wrong or is confusing them, which can lead to long and emotionally fraught conversations.

These conversations can also be fraught for contact center agents or loan officers. Agents and loan officers must balance fast, transparent service with evolving regulatory requirements. If they make any errors (such as failing to read required disclosures), they risk damaging the borrower's trust and exposing the business to legal issues.  

Mortgage lending and servicing will always involve complex processes, but one thing that can change is how contact centers set up their agents and loan officers to support these processes. When contact center leaders understand what’s happening across all borrower conversations—and can use those insights to inform real-time guidance for agents—they're well-positioned to deliver a positive borrower experience.

We recently interviewed Steve Trier, Chief Customer Officer, and Spencer Henderson, Account Director at Creovai, about what they’ve learned from working with customers in the mortgage industry. Below, we’re sharing some of the highlights, including their observations about current CX challenges in the industry, how contact centers are using technology to address those challenges, and some of the highest-impact use cases for that tech.

Why CX matters in the mortgage industry

For mortgage originators

Mortgage originators are competing on experience, with research indicating borrowers think a great customer experience is almost as important as securing the best rate. An exceptional CX is especially important for first-time homebuyers, who are more likely to be unfamiliar with the steps involved in taking out a home loan.  

“If I'm trying to get a mortgage, that’s a big life event for me,” says Steve. “So I have a lot of concerns as I go into that conversation. I want to make sure I know the next steps. I want to make sure I have the right information so I can make an informed decision. I want [the experience] to be fast and accurate.”

Mortgage originators that deliver on those borrower needs set themselves up to win more business now and in the future. 96% of very satisfied borrowers say they would likely use their lender again, and 72% say they would recommend their lender to other homebuyers.

For mortgage servicers

Mortgage servicers that purchase loans from originators are in a slightly different position. Their customers may not have chosen them, but they can choose not to come back to them for future lending needs. A J.D. Power study found that servicers only retain 11% of their customers. In other words, only 11% of borrowers choose to take out another loan with their mortgage service provider.  

This is a huge missed opportunity for servicers. Delivering a positive CX increases the likelihood that borrowers will choose them for future products and services—or even recommend them to other potential borrowers. A great CX in the contact center (that fast, accurate service that Steve was talking about) also translates to lower operational costs. Borrowers who get their question or issue resolved successfully on the first contact don’t need to call back, which means fewer repeat contacts.

The CX challenges mortgage providers must overcome

Process complexity

From reviewing loan applications to refinancing, mortgage providers constantly handle complex processes that involve document collection, back-and-forth communication with borrowers, property appraisals, and more. Process steps need to occur in the correct order, and it’s easy for timelines to shift (e.g., delays can occur if the borrower doesn’t submit all the correct documents). This can understandably lead to borrower frustration and make the contact center agent’s job challenging.  

On top of that, contact center leaders often lack visibility into the specific challenges that are tripping up agents or slowing down loan processes. “A lot of lenders still have legacy processes in-house,” says Spencer. “They don’t have a lot of insight into their contact center conversations. If they can track what’s going on, especially around complex disclosures and verbatim requirements, that’s very valuable.”  

Lack of communication and borrower education

Most borrowers aren’t intimately familiar with the complex processes in the mortgage industry, and when loan originators and servicers don’t clearly communicate about these processes, borrowers often call the contact center for answers. Borrowers may have questions about:

  • Setting up payment methods
  • How their escrow account works
  • Changes in insurance or property taxes
  • Loan modifications or refinancing eligibility
  • The implications of their loan being transferred to a new servicer

Many of these questions could be addressed through proactive borrower education and communication. When they aren’t, borrowers may feel like getting answers from their loan provider requires high effort, which contributes to a negative customer experience.

Limited personalization

“Every borrower is going to be in a different situation, so the contact center agent or loan officer is faced with a unique conversation every single time,” says Spencer. When a mortgage provider fails to tailor their service to borrowers, it can lead to borrowers feeling like they’re “just another loan.” This lack of personalization decreases the likelihood that the borrower will refer others to their mortgage provider or choose that provider for future loans.

Regulatory and compliance burden

Mortgage lenders have numerous compliance obligations, from federal consumer protection laws to regulatory agency requirements. Contact center agents and loan officers must read specific disclosures and complete the right workflow steps at the right time to stay in compliance—and errors can result in legal action, fines, reputational damage, and loss of borrower trust.

“The contact center can't afford compliance risks,” says Steve. “Even just the basic things, like making sure the agent is reading the proper disclosure at the right time, are incredibly important.”  

Adding to this challenge is the fact that compliance requirements regularly evolve, and contact center leaders must make sure their agents stay up to date. “When you deploy a new compliance statement, even your most tenured agents are going to take a while to internalize that,” says Steve.  

Mortgage contact centers must juggle constantly changing compliance requirements with the needs of their borrowers—including personalized service, proactive communication, and fast resolution of issues. It’s no small feat, but the right tech stack can help.

How conversation intelligence and real-time guidance help

Understanding challenges and opportunities with conversation intelligence

Conversation intelligence software automatically transcribes and analyzes contact center interactions after they occur, allowing contact center leaders to spot trends and opportunities for improvement. According to Steve, these opportunities typically fall into two broad categories.

  • Systemic improvements: Conversation intelligence technology pinpoints when borrowers talk about friction points (e.g., difficulty uploading a document, confusion about how to check on their escrow account). Contact center leaders can see how often different issues occur and what impact they have on KPIs (e.g., longer handle times, more repeat contacts). This lets them prioritize issues and make upstream changes that reduce the likelihood their borrowers will need to call them. As one of Creovai's customers put it, “The best phone call is one I didn’t have to take because we fixed the problem before it ever happened again.”
  • Individual agent coaching: Not all borrower calls can be deflected, and for those calls that need to go to the contact center, it’s important to have agents performing at their top level, giving borrowers confidence and achieving the right resolution the first time. Conversation intelligence lets contact centers track agent behaviors—including compliance adherence and skills like customer advocacy—and pinpoint specific coaching opportunities.

Another way conversation intelligence software can improve CX is through AI-driven CSAT forecasting. For example, Creovai’s CSATai model predicts a customer satisfaction score for every interaction based on what the customer said. This fills in the gaps of low-response-rate surveys, helping mortgage providers understand how every borrower who contacted them feels—and why they feel that way—so the contact center can make targeted improvements.

“This predictive score answers the question, ‘Did I provide this customer a good experience today?'” says Steve. “And if I didn’t, what can I learn from the data that helps me course-correct not only with my agents, but with those upstream customer journey friction points?”

Improving call outcomes with real-time guidance

Loan officers and contact center agents in the mortgage industry have to juggle complicated workflows, compliance requirements, and borrower expectations for fast and accurate information. It’s a lot to keep up with, even for the most seasoned agents.  

Real-time guidance software can help by serving agents relevant information the moment they need it, enabling them to focus on problem-solving and tailoring service to the borrower rather than searching for answers. It can take the form of dynamic workflows, intent-triggered checklists and coaching prompts, genAI wrap-up assistance, or all of the above. Insights from conversation intelligence can also be built into real-time guidance, ensuring agents are getting the prompts and information most likely to lead to successful call outcomes.

While conversation intelligence helps contact center leaders spot opportunities for agents to improve, real-time guidance software incorporates those opportunities into in-the-moment coaching. Examples include:

  • Sales rebuttals. Many borrowers have a lot of questions—and potentially some hesitation—before taking out a mortgage. Conversation intelligence helps mortgage contact centers identify the responses that are most effective for different questions or objections, and real-time guidance software can display the best response to the agent as soon as it detects an objection. “If we can identify the rebuttals that are working and improving the customer experience, we can cut down on loan officer training time and eliminate day-to-day inefficiencies,” says Spencer. “It’s a win-win for the mortgage provider and the consumer.”
  • Compliance adherence. Conversation intelligence can identify the compliance steps or processes that agents are struggling with, allowing contact center leaders to adjust real-time workflows or coaching prompts. This reduces compliance risk and helps agents focus on the borrower and their needs, rather than trying to remember if they’ve met all compliance requirements.  
  • Borrower engagement. Conversations about mortgage processes can be long, and it’s not unusual for potential borrowers to feel overwhelmed. Experienced loan officers may be able to pick up on borrower fatigue and take steps to re-engage the borrower. Conversation intelligence can pinpoint those best practices, and real-time guidance can deliver them to loan officers when they need them. “Real-time guidance can detect when a borrower is becoming less engaged and then give the agent guidance in the moment,” says Steve. “It’s not just helping with the workflow steps the agent takes, but with how agents interact with the borrower at these really important inflection points.”

Borrowers and contact centers want the same thing—technology helps them achieve it

As Steve points out, borrowers and contact centers ultimately want the same things. Borrowers want their loan officer or agent to be efficient, accurate, and able to tailor their service to the borrower’s needs. Mortgage companies want to reduce operational costs through efficiency, stay compliant by giving borrowers accurate and thorough information, and offer personalized service that increases borrower loyalty.

Conversation intelligence and real-time guidance help contact centers achieve their goals by:

  1. Analyzing all contact center interactions
  1. Identifying what needs to be improved (including agent coaching, workflows, and upstream friction points)
  1. Building opportunities for improvement into real-time agent prompts and coaching
  1. Continuously monitoring agent performance and interaction outcomes so the contact center can continue optimizing the borrower experience

“Mortgage providers are going to set themselves apart by listening to conversations at scale, identifying trends and patterns in the data, and ultimately acting on that,” says Spencer. “The mortgage providers that are looking for the AI tools that are going to help them do that are the ones who are going to be the winners at the end of the day.”

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