Research shows brokers have to wait on hold for around half an hour to speak to a lender
Brokers are getting very frustrated that they have had to wait for around 30 minutes, sometimes more than an hour, to speak to lenders, according to broker forum cherry.
Posts on the forum clearly show this frustration, with one broker saying that long wait times having become the norm was just not acceptable.
“People just want the old days of proper values and good service back,” the post author wrote.
Brokers also expressed their dislike of live chat, with one saying they “far prefer actual people” while another broker suggested “BDMs need real time access to client cases to actually be useful.”
“Brokers are clearly frustrated about the time they spend hanging on the phone to speak to lenders,” reiterated Donna Hopton, director at cherry. “The cherry broker forum gives brokers a secure environment where they can share their frustrations and ideas, and the fact that we are receiving record traffic month-on-month shows that this is needed now more than ever.”
According to Sharon Boyle, head of property at outsourced communications provider Moneypenny, the impact of poor lender response times was far reaching.
“It’s wasting brokers’ time, adding pressure to an already busy market, and causing delays to the house-buying process,” she pointed out. “The frustrations shared on the cherry forum should be a timely warning for lenders as they show just how damaging poor customer care is to business.
“Brokers are under tremendous amounts of pressure due to lending criteria changing on daily basis, so lenders need the right resource to keep up with call volumes and deliver professional and empathetic support.”
Research by cherry has shown that the average time a broker has to wait on hold to speak to a lender is just under 33 minutes, with the longest wait being 153 minutes, according to one of the brokers surveyed.
This is in contrast with the amount of time brokers believe would be acceptable to wait, which the research found was just under five and a half minutes.
The survey also revealed that the best lender for answering the phone quickly, according to broker respondents, was Coventry Building Society, with Accord, Skipton Building Society, and Aviva also mentioned.
Mortgage Introducer reached out to the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) for comment, but the trade body had yet to issue a response as of posting time.
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