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In this week’s episode of Business Accelerator, Alex Whitlock and Jason Back explore how perception is influencing client decision making and why brokers must take a more deliberate approach to shaping how they are viewed in the market.
The warning around client perception comes as record proportions of borrowers turn to the broker channel for help with their home loan, with many turning to the third-party channel for its convenience and specialist knowledge.
The client journey starts before first contact
According to Whitlock and Back, the traditional view of the client journey starting at inquiry no longer reflects how borrowers engage today. Instead, clients are often forming opinions based on what they hear and see before reaching out.
Referrals remain a key entry point, but they are typically followed by a period of evaluation, where clients validate that recommendation through online searches, social media, and other publicly available information.
This means brokers are being assessed on their reputation and visibility well before they have the opportunity to engage directly.
“Leaving things to chance at the start of the process can be really damaging,” Back said.
“There’s some really interesting studies done recently. One was saying that customers must trust a brand before they buy – 81 per cent of people will tell you that. Ninety-two per cent of people trust recommendations from family and friends before they believe things are advertising.
“We’ve got the opportunity to position ourselves beautifully. In fact, there’s even a thing called confirmation bias, which many of you would have heard of before, where people are actually looking for reasons to buy from us, especially if it’s things like word of mouth referrals.
“Yet we’re letting ourselves down through these little improvisations, these little idiosyncrasies. In our industry, we don’t explain things, we leave things to chance. And then we wonder why sometimes clients are putting us up against other brokers or banks.”
The journey continues
Back pointed to a series of touchpoints that shape how brokers are perceived, spanning both the pre-engagement phase and the client experience itself.
“The first port of call is what clients hear about you,” he said. “If someone was referred to you today… what would they hear?”
He noted that referrals and word of mouth often set the initial expectation, but clients will typically form their own view through independent research and observation.
This perception is then reinforced – or challenged – through each stage of direct engagement.
“How clients experience you… everything from your email responses… to how all of your staff talk to them,” Back said.
Importantly, he added that the impact of these interactions extends well beyond the transaction itself, influencing how clients reflect on the relationship over time.
“What does a client remember 12 months after working with you?” Back said.
‘Trust is borrowed’
Back describes trust in the broking process as something that is often “borrowed” at the outset, particularly when a client is referred by a third party.
As he explained: “When you get, someone gets referred to you, people are working on trust, which is borrowed. So this is someone else’s opinion and view of you.
“They then go and do some research, and that’s when you’re evaluated. So this is where again your websites and your social and your outwardly bound digital and physical presence need to be evaluated. We then go to the contact stage where then your validity is confirmed, and we start to build trust through whether it’s email or over a call or a video call. We then start meeting with our clients, and that’s when we personalise the experience.”
Whitlock added: “This is why a consistent and well communicated approach then means that when this really good prospect comes along, even if they’re, if they’re 70 per cent on the right path, what you do is you educate them on the way in and then you have the opportunity to not only turn them into a customer, but also turn them into an avid referrer. I think there’s actually a multiplier effect.”
Whitlock also noted that brokers need to challenge their own assumptions about how they are perceived in market.
Whitlock said: “We believe that we know what we are in business, what our proposition is, but understanding what the customer actually thinks, taking an audit of what is written about us elsewhere through our reviews and so forth.”
[Related: Why ‘being a doormat’ is killing broker profitability]