DS News

65 "The GSEs and HUD have mentioned other means of communication than by phone or letter—that's a first. They're trying to push out there the need to contact customers in the way they normally get contacted." —John Dunnery, VP of Government Loan Servicing, Bayview Loan Servicing messaging. "Agents normally will stick to a story, but that story can vary, depending on the type of call, the type of borrower on the call, and the questions that are coming. Trying to maintain consistency has been difficult," Dunnery explained. "We use daily feedback from the quality control calls for our team huddles to ensure that the message is consistent." Even with the shift to digital communications for many customer interactions and the ongoing importance of phone calls, physical letters are still essential elements of documenting changes in customer payment obligations. "We do a significant amount of quality control on the letters that go out to the customer," Dunnery said. "At last count, we were up to eight letters that could be mailed to the customer on top of all other letters they would get as they rolled delinquent, part of the normal delinquency servicing." Dunnery admitted that this can occasionally lead to confusion for customers, as some letters are a result of COVID-19 responses and others are more typical delinquency/forbearance letters. "We are documenting each of the changes we are making to policies and procedures that are necessary to implement the responses that we are putting forward so that we create a paper trail for later," Dunnery said. Based on what happened during the Great Recession, regulators will likely be examining closely any changes to policies and procedures, Dunnery added. "We want to make sure that the paper trail is adequate and maybe over communicated so that there are no issues in the future." A BOON FOR SUBSERVICING While the pandemic and subsequent job losses are hitting mortgagees, mortgage holders, and servicers hard, it has meant a booming business for subservicers, said Bob Caruso, President and CEO of ServiceMac. He told DS News that business had grown 10% since the pandemic first hit, with some servicers straining to handle the surge in volume brought by current demand. "We want to make sure that customers who are asking for forbearance or for modification don't have any service-level issues," Caruso said. So the interactive voice response (IVR) tree is simplified, asking customers to choose from only two options so that they can quickly advance to pandemic- or non-pandemic-related servicing. Self-service can be helpful, but only to a point, according to Caruso, so SeviceMac directs callers to live agents to help make the payment/ resolution decision that is best for them. "We want to make sure that the customer fully understands the different options," Caruso explained. "We want to make sure that they know what forbearance looks like." THE STAFFING TWO-STEP However, the business boom, combined with the social distancing measures that most companies are following, provides a challenge for companies looking to hire additional staff, Caruso said. He said that ServiceMac uses LinkedIn and other resources to advertise for openings. In the past, applicants would be interviewed in one of the company's offices, enabling executives to see nonverbal cues as well as verbal responses to questions. It's not the same with a video interview, Caruso said. "It's very different hiring people who you have never physically met." Some industry companies have approached staffing issues by moving to an "all-hands-on-deck" philosophy for managing the onslaught of communications demanded by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the sheer volume of calls, the call handling time for calls has doubled from about six minutes to nearly 13 minutes as consumers—many who had never been in a forbearance situation before—seek information on payment options, ompson said. "ere was a real cathartic exercise that needed to occur with the consumer on the phone," she explained. Flagstar redeployed members from its Bankruptcy and Disclosure teams who had contact center training, as well as implementing special training to handle forbearance calls. "It was an exciting and challenging group effort to make sure that we gave consumers as much access to us as humanly possible," ompson said. KEEPING IN TOUCH "One of the immediate challenges facing our customers is misinformation," Hughes

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