HR expert says prior planning is key
It’s no secret that most people don’t like having difficult conversations, but when it comes to mortgage broking, there will always be moments where you have to tell a customer that things haven’t turned out as favourably as hoped. MPA spoke with HR consultant Rebecca Houghton from Bold HR about how to tell a client you have bad news.
Avoiding difficult conversations
According to Houghton, data shows that almost 80% of people are avoiding having difficult conversations at any given time. This reluctance mostly comes down to the fight or flight response because it is seen as a threat. But a culture of avoidance creates a huge performance impact in a workplace – and this is also true for customer-facing interactions.
“A lot of the time with those difficult conversations, things escalate and explode at that point because there hasn’t been enough investment put in up front,” she said.
By managing expectations early on, brokers can prevent against this escalation and have a smoother interaction with their clients, she explained.
What happens if you don’t manage expectations
According to Houghton, while most brokers are really good at walking their customers through what they can expect when applying for finance, sometimes they don’t invest in going through all the worst-case scenarios – much to their detriment if things turn sour during the credit decisioning process.
“When something goes wrong, the client is caught by surprise and gets shocked and swings a punch at the mortgage broker because they haven’t had that education up front,” she said.
Read more: Why managing client expectations is crucial
Just as we use fight or flight to avoid having difficult conversations, a customer told an unexpected piece of bad news is likely to have a fight or flight response to deal with it. In other words, the shock of the bad news triggers a threat response and they instinctively fight it – not necessarily by using physical violence, but by reacting with aggressive language, or even posting a bad review.
The importance of checking in
In order to avoid this escalation and subsequent fight response from the customer, Houghton recommends checking in every time there has been a hiccup. She suggested using language like the following.
“We’ve had a bit of a hiccup with this bank. I don’t want you to worry about it, I’m managing it. The worst-case scenario is this, the best-case scenario is no change to our plan. I’m going to call you tomorrow and let you know,” she said. “Even if you think this is going to blow up and be horrible, you’re softening the blow by saying, I don’t want you to panic, I’ll call you again tomorrow, worst-case scenario is this.”
By doing this, you will receive clues as to how badly they will react if the worst-case scenario does come to pass – giving you to power to pre-plan how you will mitigate this, she said.
“If people’s expectations are managed really, really well, they might be disappointed, but they won’t be surprised,” she said. “If you can take surprise out of people’s voices, you tend to take away the threat reaction.”
