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How Homebridge establishes customer satisfaction as a key differentiator

Monday, December 5, 2022
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Homebridge had a mission to be the most highly recommended mortgage company in the country.

So they set out to achieve it by working hard to satisfy every customer’s needs, going beyond merely “closing a loan.” But when Ben Chapman started at Homebridge as Director of Client Facing Experience & Analytics, he saw an opportunity to better establish customer satisfaction as their key differentiator and use it as a marketing tool to grow the business.

As Homebridge wasn’t a brand many people were familiar with, he knew they needed authentic customer reviews available where people were researching their brand, in order for prospective customers to feel comfortable doing business with them. Homebridge had plenty of great customer testimonials, collected by their associates, but Ben knew sharing these onsite wouldn’t be credible enough to have a positive impact on search engine results; and in turn, site visitation and engagement. To prospective clients, copying and pasting reviews on their site left room for customers to presume bias, selectivity and/or modification of its testimonials. So he decided to do some research of his own: finding a way to collect and leverage reviews that people could trust.

When researching the different review solutions on the market, Ben came across Trustpilot. Struck by the simplicity and solidity of the Trustpilot open review platform, and its extensive safeguards against fraudulent reviews, Ben felt confident that using Trustpilot would provide the review credibility Homebridge needed.

Results

1. Empower customers to represent their brand

Using Trustpilot to proactively ask customers to leave reviews, Homebridge empowers their current clients to represent their brand to prospective customers. Integrating Trustpilot’s API solution with their email platform, Mailchimp, they’ve created an optimally performing email invitation, improving the industry average response rate of 2.1% by 10x with a 22.5% response rate.

Asking for reviews from all customers has also allowed Homebridge to get a more accurate depiction of their business, improving their TrustScore rating to a 4.8/5.

With their reviews, customers are able to sell Homebridge services for them via multiple Trustpilot TrustBox widgets that display reviews throughout their website.

Homebridge onsite reviews

To improve their online reputation and help consumers when researching their brand, Homebridge created a webpage just for their reviews. Now, when shoppers search for keywords like “homebridge reviews,” they’re likely to find multiple pages exclusively devoted to third-party verified reviews of the business.

2. Track reviews for individual employees & branches

By using Trustpilot’s API to send custom review invitations, Homebridge reviews are automatically matched to their respective Loan Originators and branches. Management uses this information to assess service quality in their branches and by Loan Originatorsand give recognition to individuals, branches and regions. Most frequently, the reviews serve to improve employee morale and encourage them to keep providing top notch service.

Homebridge average reviews star rating

Homebridge aggregates each Loan Originator’s reviews and displays them on their individual webpages to help establish personal credibility and trust with new or prospective clients.

Homebridge branch reviews

3. Streamline customer support processes

Using Trustpilot’s Zendesk integration, Homebridge monitors and resolves all reviews, both positive and negative, from within their Zendesk account. And while 4 and 5-star reviews receive an automatic response thanking them for their feedback, the Zendesk integration creates tickets for every review below 4 stars to allow 1, 2, and 3-star Trustpilot reviews to quickly and easily be managed outside of the Trustpilot platform by the Customer Experience Team. 

Example of an automatic response to positive feedback

Example of an automatic response to positive feedback

To do that, the IT Customer Experience Team collaborates with the Marketing Customer Experience group – that is more focused on internal processes – and is able to more appropriately respond to, and internally escalate, any complaints. The IT Team owns the technology behind developing and managing these connections, as well as workflows that help automate, escalate, notify and publish the various aspects of the reviews based on all the possible variables that must be considered.

Example of how a Trustpilot review can be managed within the Zendesk Channel Integration

Example of how a Trustpilot review can be managed within the Zendesk Channel Integration

When Homebridge receives negative reviews, the team gets an immediate notification sent out via email, and browser-based alerts for agents. Additionally, alerts are continued to be sent out over the next 4 hours, until someone provides an initial response to the negative review. All of this workflow is managed and reported on via the Zendesk Suite of products using the Trustpilot integration. This also allows the team to internally collaborate and publicly respond to the customer directly on the Trustpilot platform.

To resolve negative reviews, Homebridge likes to get to the root of the issue by using ‘tags’ that are part of their proactive review invitations. With this information at hand, the team is able to research and speak directly with any internal employees who interacted with the customer in order to get a clearer understanding of the situation. 

Homebridge likes to take the conversation offline and request identification to ensure the customer is legitimate, before responding to it. If the negative review is not genuine, the team reports it to Trustpilot’s compliance department for review and removal.

“I think the greatest results we get in responding to negative reviews, is showing our future customers that we are very much focused on providing excellent customer service and that we will continue to do our best to achieve not only their business, but continued satisfaction.”
Ben Chapman
Director, Client Facing Experience & Analytics, Homebridge

If you'd like to use reviews to improve your customers' satisfaction, just like Homebridge have, why not request a free Trustpilot demo? It’s quick and easy, just click the link below.

This case study was first published in 2018, and updated in 2022.

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