How can you improve your customer service?

Kylie Speer  00:00:07 

Hello and welcome to NZ Advisor TV. I'm Kylie Speer, and joining me today is Elise Peters, co founder and managing director at The Mortgage Girls. The Mortgage Girls has been named as winner of Best customer service of an individual office at the New Zealand Mortgage Awards for 2025 Welcome to you, Elise, huge congratulations, and thank you so much for joining us today.  

Elyce Peters  00:00:33 

Thank you so much, Kylie, it's awesome to be here, and it's been an amazing wind down after having the awards and coming away, which with what we would consider our favorite award, which is that customer service award. 

Kylie Speer  00:00:49 

Well, firstly, Elyce, how does TMG ensure consistent, proactive communication across all client touch points, especially in a fully virtual service model? 

Elyce Peters  00:01:02 

Yeah, so we don't. We all work from home, and it's something that was really important to us when we first started the company, Holly and myself. It's different, I know, and I do understand that not everybody works well when they're working from home and they prefer to work in an office. But for us, it works brilliantly. We've got some amazing advisors, and we're able to really give some great advice. Still being in the comfort of our own homes, we do have a hot seat at a real estate office that we can go into, and we also do our training there once a fortnight, and the reason we needed that was Holly's kitchen table really just got too small for our team, which sounds a little bit silly, but that's literally one of the biggest issues that we were having, is that we were having to sit on couches, and it just didn't work. So having that office is a great space for us to be able to have those catch ups in person, which is still really important. Communication to our clients is huge. So we always make sure that our team has support where they need it, and that they're getting back to our clients, because that's one of the biggest and the hardest things to do in our industry, is to continue that support and that communication with our clients, because in a 24/7 world, everyone wants everything done yesterday, so it's setting realistic expectations with them. And also, if you say you're going to do something, do it, that's so important, because a lot of people into when you say you're going to do something, they're expecting that to come through with our with our job, we're always based on time frames. So you have got getting your pre approval through, waiting for the bank to get that approved, then you've got a contract. So you've got a certain amount of days to be able to fill that contract. So everything's always kind of timetabled, so it's making sure we can keep up with that and having the systems behind us to support the team, to enable them to do it as well. 

Kylie Speer  00:02:59 

What specific systems or tools like Betty are in place to support advisors in delivering timely and accurate updates to clients throughout the mortgage process? 

Elyce Peters  00:03:12 

So Betty is my little friend. She has she's basically the tool which has all of the different policy updates that the banks come through and helps the advisors to ensure that they can give the best advice possible. It's kind of a one stop shop of policies, which is, I suppose, a benefit to our advisors, that they don't have to go through it all and they don't have to remember it all off the top of their head. Experience definitely helps with that kind of stuff, but because policies change so consistently, the criteria changes, the appetite changes for the banks, that's also important to be able to ensure that we're giving the correct advice. So yes, Betty's great. We also have our CRM support. We have a myriad of different templates and tools to enable the team to be more efficient. We've definitely been getting more AI into using that technology piece, and we're really trying to get step up and step in front of that to be able to give the best communication and use that technology to make us more fast, efficient, and ensure that that presentation is awesome and professional for our clients. 

Kylie Speer  00:04:27 

Can you share examples of how tmgs personalized approach has contributed to maintaining high conversion rates and client retention over the past year? 

Elyce Peters  00:04:39 

Definitely. So the big thing for us is getting to know our clients the way that technology is going. We feel like that personal touch and that relationship that you build with your your client, is so important, and that's one of the main reasons why I think we have that great conversion rate and also that retention rate. Yeah. We're a business, we still are going to have people, they're going to have things that happen, and they're going to sell a house or not be able to buy straight away, and that's life, but it's making sure we're keeping those relationships top of mind, because that's what our job of advisers to do. Is going to be more and more placed on those relationships with our clients, rather than just a transaction. I think that's what kind of pulls us apart, is it's always about that personalized service and making sure we're doing what's best for them. Sometimes it's having courageous conversations. Sometimes it's just being their cheerleader. I was one of my team the other day. We were talking about the fact we are also counselors, and you have clients that you you work through some of the most exciting moments of their life, of buying a first home, and then at the same time, you could be working through a client who's going through a separation, and it's one of the worst moments of their life. So we kind of there through the thick of it, through the good times and the bad, which is kind of an amazing role to be able to help them through 

Kylie Speer  00:06:10 

Elyce, how does TMG gather and act on client feedback to continually improve its service experience and maintain high satisfaction levels? 

Elyce Peters  00:06:20 

So we always make sure we're asking for feedback throughout the process. That's really important to us, and not just at the end, when they've bought a house and it's all finished, but asking for that active feedback throughout the process. And how that works, the way that our advice works is that we're always double checking that we're going down the right track with them, and that's really important to us to make sure that they're on board with what we're doing and why we're doing it. We also have all of the feedback from, you know, Facebook, Google reviews we're able to send out to make sure we're double checking. The big thing for advisors is asking for that feedback, and it can be kind of hard and definitely for new advisors that are coming into the role. It's something that we really do push is ask for that feedback, ask for those ask to see, like, is there something that I could have done better if you do have a client that you don't you end up losing for one reason or another, having that courageous conversation of, what could I have done better to retain you as a customer? You know, you're always going to have situations where you're just not the right fit for them, or they needed a faster turnaround than what we were able to provide as a broker, and you might have sent them direct to a bank, but you could say, you know, other than that, was there anything I could have done better. So it's that self reflection to ensure that what we're doing is the right thing, but also in taking it on board, not taking it too personally, but making sure we reflect on that and finding out what those learns are so we can improve everything moving forward. 

Kylie Speer  00:07:58 

And finally, Elise what training or development initiatives have had the greatest impact on enhancing advisor performance and supporting tmgs customer service experience? 

Elyce Peters  00:08:10 

We have a really robust training system, and Holly, for credit to her, she is the number one woman behind that. It's something that we are really proud of, the training that we go through for junior advisors when they're first getting into the role, or even experienced advisors coming into the role, just showing them how we do things at the mortgage skills, which is slightly different, I'm sure, to other advising firms, not saying it's better or worse. It's just everyone does things on a slightly different platform. We with that training program that's really good, but it's that constant evolution of what we do. I think one thing that we are slightly different to a few firms is we don't really have a hierarchy. Now, that sounds kind of weird, but everyone has a voice, and so whether it's an advisor or an administration or an EA like everybody feels they can help and explain things. If they think we can do something in a slightly different way, everyone has that voice to be able to do it, which is a really cool culture to have within a company that everyone feels equal heard and feels like can make change if they can see something that we could do better. So our systems are consistently evolving, consistently changing and being updated, along with all the different market market updates that happen and policies that change. Like the way we do things is consistently changing. We always say the only thing we do consistent is change. But the thing is, at the end of the day, it's creating that really good experience for our customers to make sure that we can give them the best that we can but not just for our customers, but also for our team. Because as advisors, we want to get out there and help people. People, and the more efficiently we can do things behind the scene, the more time we get to spend in front of a client. 

Kylie Speer  00:10:07 

Brilliant. Well, congratulations once again on your clearly well deserved award, Elyce, it was fantastic speaking with you. 

Elyce Peters  00:10:15 

Thank you so much for spending time to have a chat to me today, and thank you to all the listeners out there that have tuned in. Honestly, if you ever have any questions, give me a call. I'm sure people can find me in today's technology, but I'm always loving to, like, meet more people in the industry and around the industry. It's it's awesome. We we're all lucky to do what we do. 

Kylie Speer  00:10:39 

Yes. And thank you, of course, to our viewers for watching the latest episode of NZ Advisor TV. We look forward to seeing you again soon.