Lender chat service

One lender, which is well known for an abysmal live chat, has made me treat my desk like a punch bag. The anger levels from even trying to communicate with them would make the Dalai Lama lose their shit. Nothing can prepare you for the copy and paste extravaganza that will be delivered to you with no actual answers or justification of why they have given you that answer. As I write this I can feel the bile and anger rising up inside me, just by thinking of trying to use them and the pain it will bring me and the clients. I would love their senior management to come into a brokerage and see the faeces show that they deliver. Just from this one paragraph, I am triggered like a SJW having the wrong pronouns being used. Damn it!! Please senior management, come and use it and see.

On the whole, live-chat has been a fantastic development in the broker market. It allows me to multi-task and keep hold time on the phone to a minimum. It's also great for establishing a solid audit trail for specific cases as it's so much easier to recall a saved Live-chat rather than scrolling through endless call recordings to check what was said. I'll use live chat regularly to check my knowledge of existing lending policy with most lenders. Some lenders publish extensive policy online which is fantastic and means that they are much less busy on their Live-chat. For example, NatWest do not publish their full lending policy online, and what they do publish is hard to navigate. For this reason it's not unusual to find yourself number 80+ in the queue when trying to get through. Some other lenders, such as Halifax, have a much more holistic lending policy published on their website, which means they are less reliant on 'Live-chat'. On those occasions that it's necessary, there’s very little waiting in queues as a result. I would use Live-chat for most queries albeit not when the case is fringing policy or complex for a number or reasons. A good old-fashioned phone call suits the complex stuff. Some lenders need to improve the waiting time to speak to an agent. Others, meanwhile, need to improve the training of the agents answering the chats. For example, Barclays' Live-chat is pretty much useless as the agents will only refer to the policy on their website and have little knowledge of the wider policy. You can imagine how frustrating it is when an agent simply copies and pastes the policy that you can read directly from the website.

Dante should have made suffering through lender webchat the 10th circle of hell. That's harsh on the good ones but wow are there some stinkers. I won't name lenders but every broker has a tale of one of the big high street lenders who are notoriously bad at giving out inaccurate and just plain wrong information and updates. I think most brokers frustrations stem from help chats that simply regurgitate lending policy. If it was in published lending policy, we would have checked there.

Live Chat is a valuable communication medium when resourced well. Live chat is not the same as a Chat Bot. To open "Live chat" and discover you are in an algorithm that spits back predetermined responses is as welcome as spooning a mouthful of strawberry mousse to discover it is, in fact, taramosalata. You might have to queue, but, sitting in a queue to type to someone means your phoneline is free and you carry on with other work if you have to wait. When Live chat provides a transcript of a query and response it is a valuable record as part of research. It is a shame some lenders have moved away from this functionality.

I love live chat, it has been revolutionary to brokers such as myself as now we can have answers from lenders in minutes rather than wait on hold for what could be almost an hour in some cases. It's also easy to live chat whilst working on another case or live chat a few lenders at once. It's also really helpful as it provides a paper trail for compliance which a phone call does not. I tend to use lie chat for criteria or complex cases mostly but it is great if a lender can also provide case updates for active cases via live chat. Everything I can use it for I will. I am not a fan when lenders only have the live chat showing if an agent is available. I would prefer for it always to be there and then just show my position in the queue.

Live chat serves a purpose for a simple and basic question. I would previously have said it was quick but in recent months have seen an embarrassingly long queue with many lenders. For an experienced broker there’s a lot of value in calling a BDM to talk through the case which you couldn’t possibly do on a live chat. I get the feeling I know more or certainly as much as the person on the end of the chat function, which does not add me any value. I’m aware a few lenders are ensuring fully competent individuals are running the chats but it’s not consistent. And a massive pitfall is you cannot ask questions about specific cases due to security, and with so many lenders it takes so much time working out who’s going to be best to help. Invest more in phone based BDMs.

Lender live chat is useful however it varies dramatically from lender to lender. Some are great at giving you case and criteria updates, others will only give criteria updates and one very well known lender will only give information written on a script that you can easily find yourself. The crux of live chat is the same as calling them, there is nothing more frustrating than sending a live chat message to find yourself number 876158 in the queue.