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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 54 J ames Braxton serves as VP of Collections at Servbank. He has been with Servbank—and with its previous incarnation, The Money Source, Inc.—since September 2016. Over those years, Braxton advanced through multiple roles, including VP of Customer and Call Center, and SPOC Manager. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Arizona State University. MortgagePoint recently spoke with Braxton about meeting customers where they wish to be met, how COVID forced the industry to evolve, and working to develop the next generation of mortgage industry leaders. Q: Tell me a little bit about your role at Servbank. My official title is VP of Resolutions (collections), and of course with that role, I dedicate a large portion of my time to driv- ing results while looking at the landscape of our industry to make sure we not only exceed expectations, but stay ahead of the curve for both Servbank and our clients. In addition to those important items, we try to approach servicing a little bit differently here at Servbank. We ensure that sufficient time is dedicated every day to developing the future leaders of the company. For example, we routinely have im- pactful leadership development sessions with management teams in addition to one-on-ones, and skill-based development we have with our people. We invest heavily in many initiatives to develop the next generation of leaders, while continuing to deliver the highest quality level of service and performance results. We've found that the more time spent developing and en- gaging team members has a direct impact on our people taking personal ownership of quality of service, the KPI results, and the customer experience. Q: You said that Servbank approaches servicing "a little bit differently." Could you unpack that for me? What does that look like? We are obsessed with the customer experience. Servicing is a highly regulated and rigid world, so in many aspects, the mechanics behind servicing remain the same, but where we can make a difference is in the customers' experience with us. From a customer's perspective you usually do not contact your mortgage servicer unless you have an issue, and more often than not, when you do, it's not a high-quality experience. As I stated, we are obsessed with ensuring that does not occur. We want to make sure that when our customers interact with us, they leave with an experience that is unlike anything else. And I can say unequivocally that we do, and we have the receipts to prove it. T H E P O I N T F e a t u r e d C o n v e r s a t i o n s W i t h M o r t g a g e ' s B e s t a n d B r i g h t e s t VP of Collections Servbank Our Net Promoter Score is 85%, our Customer Satisfaction is 98%, and One Call Resolution is 92%. Not only are these all best-in-class numbers, but they are also not normal in this industry. We take great pride in our achievements statistically, but even more importantly, how it translates to our customers and clients. These are things most servicers don't put a big em- phasis on. We are not sure why, maybe its cost, maybe it's some other measurable, I don't know. But for us, it is the priority. We operate at a highly compliant level, and we do it in a way that our customers have an experience that always exceeds both their and our own high standards. Q: One topic we hear about a lot is how customer expectations for their servicer have changed in the wake of the pandemic and a general shift to more digital, more self-service. How have the past few years changed your approach or your philosophy, if at all? COVID challenged us to innovate new ways to continue to operate at a high level not only in the office but outside of the tra- ditional work setting. We have always had a stringent process to find the best talent, but given the large scale remote dynamic, it forced us to review all our existing process- es, procedures, and our communication for any and every potential area to improve. Primarily, we had to tailor the way we engaged our people. Things like gamifica- tion, digital team building events, feedback and discovery sessions, enhanced commu- nication, etc. were all new additions. Our culture is what makes us who we are and perform the way we do, and we had to make sure we kept that culture alive by finding new ways to export it to our remote people. We had people dealing with personal and family issues, working at home from their kitchen table, stuck in the house with no friends or family outside of work for months. This was not the same level of personal interaction that our people were used to, not to mention the mental stress and challenges they were experiencing, so we wanted to bring our culture home with them. Not only did these innovations help us during the crisis, but we were able to James Braxton