Starting your own loan company can be very profitable, but it is difficult to build trust with your customers. Financial institutions, in general, are treated with mistrust by a lot of people, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. People don’t necessarily view you as a business that is there to help, they think of you as a predatory organization that is just trying to get money out of them through interest payments. 

The best way to combat this and establish a long-term relationship with customers is to find ways to improve the customer experience. If you focus on excellent customer service and make the entire loan application and approval process as smooth as possible, your business will be a lot more successful. These are some of the most effective ways to do that. 

Educate Your Customers

If you are not a financial expert, applying for a loan can be quite daunting. There are a lot of different options available and lots of difficult financial terms that you may not understand. There is a perception that lenders are trying to confuse customers into signing up for expensive loans that they can’t afford. If you want to break this perception, you should put effort into educating your customers. Your content strategy is a brilliant way to do this. Write lots of informative articles on your site explaining the different kinds of loans and giving explanations of all of the different terms. Information about how to choose the right financial instruments for your specific situation is excellent too. If you spend time educating your customers, you show them that you are invested in their financial goals, and you are just trying to help them make the right borrowing decisions. It also streamlines the process for everybody involved because the customer already has an idea of what kind of loan they need and how much they need to borrow. 

Streamline The Appraisal Process 

When people come to you looking for a loan, it is usually because they have financial obligations that they need to meet. If it takes a long time for them to be approved, this can cause a lot of stress. In order to provide better customer service, you need to streamline your appraisal process as much as possible. You can use appraisal vendor management software (visit https://www.mercuryvmp.com/ for more information) to manage the appraisal process more efficiently and also find ways to save on your costs at the same time. Educating customers is important here too because you can make sure that they have all the correct documentation right away. By making it quicker to approve loans, you can make things much easier for your customers and show them that you are invested in helping them improve their financial situation. 

Be Available 

This one is simple, but it’s so important. If you want to build a relationship with customers, you should always be available. Make sure that you always have enough people on your team to meet with customers and discuss any questions they might have. Offering online video meetings and live chat services is another great way to make yourself available to customers at all times. This is increasingly important as people want a more personal service from financial institutions, which is why community banking is becoming more popular. The more personal you can make the service, the better the customer experience will be. 

Listen To Customer Feedback

The biggest mistake that any business makes when trying to improve the customer experience is not listening to customer feedback. You can guess at what changes would improve things for the customer, but only they know what they really want. That’s why you should always ask for feedback from your customers, and then use that information to direct any changes that you make in the future. Building an email list is a good place to start here, and you can then send out customer surveys (visit https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk for some great tips on writing them). Sending out regular surveys allows you to continually make changes to improve the customer experience in a variety of ways.  

Trust is a big issue for companies in the financial services industry. Many customers are already naturally cautious of lenders and if your business is going to thrive, it is important that you dispel those myths and start building trust. Using these simple methods to improve the customer experience is the most effective way to do that. 

Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat