Fannie Mae has launched Know Your Options Customer Care, a customer engagement strategy and training program for servicers aimed at preventing foreclosures by developing consultative relationships with struggling homeowners.
Under the program, Fannie Mae personnel conduct training for servicers' call center employees, provide scripting for interactions with homeowners and help implement ongoing quality control measures. Fannie Mae has been developing the Know Your Options Customer Care program for approximately one year and is already implementing it with 18 of its largest servicers.Â
According to Fannie Mae, one of the key elements of the program is creating a single point of contact in the call center for each customer to ensure that rapport is built with the homeowner, regular contact is maintained through the loss mitigation process and foreclosure prevention options are properly presented and pursued. Servicers that have participated in the program have typically seen 20% to 30% increases in workouts.Â
‘Everybody wins when we can prevent foreclosure: the servicer, Fannie Mae and, most importantly, the homeowner and their community,’ says Leslie Peeler, senior vice president of Fannie Mae's national servicing organization. ‘What we've learned through the housing crisis is that if everybody takes the responsibility to work together and act early, then we can prevent foreclosures and keep families in their homes in many cases. We want our servicers to be trusted counselors to their customers, from attentively collecting documents to advising them of their options and guiding them through the process.’
