Twitter Helps Fast Track Mortgage Loan
Image via CrunchBase
Any number of pundits and others make fun of Twitter. My husband makes fun of Twitter. He just doesn’t “get” it. Some days, I don’t know why I am doing it, either. And then I get a job lead or some other benefit, and my faith in Twitter is renewed. Today, I found yet another story to promote the use of Twitter: An irate borrower in Australia was able to get a mortgage fast tracked after posting a complaint on Twitter.
After more than a month of frustration with Commonwealth Bank, one borrower got frustrated and mentioned it on Twitter, reports news.au.com:
The post said simply: “CBA f#$&ked up our loan approval so we’re still waiting to exchange contracts”.
One hour and 17 minutes after it went live I was contacted by someone offering help to solve my problem. That person was the head of Commonwealth Bank’s customer service team.
He told me the message made him “feel like crap” and the bank was only just beginning to understand how crucial social media sites were in maintaining the corporate giant’s image. By 3pm the next day, my loan was formally approved.
It appears that Twitter is the new customer complaint line. Indeed, it does far more damage than a phone line for customer complaints. Hundreds — or even thousands — of people can read about how something isn’t going right, and for a company that can be a big deal. Social media is rapidly changing the way business is done, and that includes the way mortgage lenders handle things. Of course, if everyone in the backlog started tweeting their own dissatisfaction with a mortgage process, it might crash the system (fail whale!) — and it wouldn’t ease the backlog.
But, for a few isolated cases of savvy social media use, Twitterers can effectively improve the type of service they receive. As long as the mortgage lender is plugged in as well.
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