The Client

First established in 1988, The Mortgage Shop has been helping home buyers & home owners arrange finance in a simple, straightforward way for their dream property.

With multiple offices as well as several staff working remotely, a centralised phone system is essential for them to connect with existing clients and leads as well as meeting regulatory requirements when it comes to customer communication.

The Challenge

The Mortgage Shop has been working with Face For Business for around three years.

They have always used call handlers to help with their telephone answering. Their original service had been based on a pager system from Vodafone which had evolved into a PA system.

The challenge came as a result of Vodafone exiting the call handler marketplace.

This was a problem for The Mortgage Shop because regulatory requirements meant they must provide clients with a clear point of contact and left them without a centralised call answering service.

The Mortgage Shop put out a tender for a new telephone answering service, but following a recommendation from an existing client of theirs, they contacted Face For Business to see how we could help them.

“Face For Business came highly recommended to us when we’d first put the contract out to tender. After speaking with them it was clear they had the experience and flexibility to do what we needed,” said Gary Bush, Director at The Mortgage Shop.

Integrating a telephone answering service and front of house function

Due to the sensitive nature of The Mortgage Shop’s business and the types of information we’d be dealing with on calls, it was important they invested in a call answering service that understood the need for confidentiality and had systems in place to keep this kind of information private.

Our initial work involved integrating our call answering system with their existing processes and technology to ensure a smooth transition over to Face For Business.

This included gathering information on the types of calls we’d be dealing with, and how these calls should be dealt with.

Initially we were brought in to provide a simple telephone answering service, which involved answering any overflow calls that The Mortgage Shop was unable to answer and either taking messages to pass on, or transferring calls to the right team members.

However, in the years since we started working with The Mortgage Shop, their investment with us, and the complexity of the work we do, has grown significantly.

“We’ve invested very heavily in Face For Business because we saw they were capable of offering much bigger benefits than what we had originally asked them to,” Gary added.

“We started to listen to the call recordings and how they were handling calls and it was clear they were capable and extremely professional, but that they could also offer much more value to us.

“After starting with a few calls, we’ve now invested in an entirely new and bespoke system that has fully integrated their virtual assistants into our business. They don’t just handle calls anymore, they’re able to directly assist customers with their enquiries.

“It means they’re able to access client cases (except for sensitive information) and are able to resend items that a client may need for a mortgage application or they can relay information directly to the client without the need to take a message or forward the call on.

“We’ve even set up a system so Face For Business’ assistants are able to accept payments from clients on behalf of The Mortgage Shop, which has drastically improved our operations.

“It means we have a full telephone answering service and reception function that deals with our inbound calls and client enquiries.”

The results

With Face For Business now dealing with overflow telephone answering as well as providing a virtual assistant service capable of handling some customer enquiries directly, The Mortgage Shop has been able to improve their operational efficiency without the excessive costs of full-time call handlers.

“The added value of having Face For Business onboard is huge,” added Gary.

“The way they handle the calls and deal with customers directly has cut down a lot of those calls we’ve had to deal with, allowing our team to focus more time on complex client issues and adding more value to them.

“One huge benefit has been in reducing the cases of client escalations because they’ve been able to handle those directly, whether it’s answering a basic enquiry, taking client information or payments, or resending clients information they may have misplaced.

“It’s also been highly cost effective. Rather than having someone on a wage and paying regardless of whether they’re taking calls or not, we pay for the time Face For Business spends on the phone.

“We really have grown with them and we have plans to continue that investment further and bring Face For Business closer to our business.

“We’ve got multiple offices and some staff working permanently from home, so having that central service that can even deal with complex enquiries has been invaluable.”

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