Customer service is becoming a turning point for service based entities as the internet penetrates more verticals and niches. The title industry is no exception and facing this transformation strongly than ever.
Title companies are realizing that phone calls alone cannot convince customers and bring business anymore. They must embrace the digital transformation that can help them boost business by engaging customers and establishing their worth.
This is one of the reasons that chat gadgets and cost calculators are becoming increasingly popular for title websites, implying the growing role in conversation based marketing for title companies.
We decided to conduct a website survey of 352 title insurance companies to know how these title companies fare when it comes to implementing these tools to elevate customer experience that is in sync with the current trends.
We also considered factors such as mobile friendliness, online reputation, and client testimonials in our research to derive conclusions. Overall, we considered a total of 9 website factors for title companies to put this survey together.
This blog post is going to be very useful for title companies that are in the midst of this digital transformation and finding it difficult to attract business online. So without further ado, let’s get started.
The 9 factors we considered for this survey are:
- Instant Quotes. Does the website provide tools (preferably web based) to generate instant title quotes for visitors?
- Closing Cost Calculator. Does the website provide calculators for visitors to generate closing cost breakdowns?
- Order Capture Form. Does the website allow customers to send title orders to the company?
- Customer Resources. If the website provides ebooks, blogs, case studies, etc. to educate customers or not?
- Mobile Friendly. How does the website feel on a mobile web browser or smartphone?
- Testimonials. Are there any customer testimonials featured on the website?
- Google Maps Listing. Does the website show up on Google maps? How many google reviews does the company have?
- Services Offered. A simple breakdown of the nature of services such as title only, title and escrow, attorney, etc. listed by the company or not?
- Team Member List. Is the team listed on the website? It denotes the competence of the company.
Survey Sample considered for the study:
Our focus was to make sure that title companies are adequately represented with respect to their services and team size to obtain dependable insights and outcomes.
We also made sure that we consider all the states that contribute to the majority of transactions on an annual basis.
Our survey sample showing the states, agency type and agency size
We found some interesting patterns that reveal major pain points for the title industry as a whole. We are going to segment our findings into customer service and trustworthiness to summarize the review.
Features related to customer service:
We see that many title companies have not oriented their businesses with respect to customer service in the digital age.
This is reflected by the fact that the majority of title companies are not providing title quotes to their visitors. 6-7 out of 10 title companies are not providing any type of title quotes. Furthermore, the majority of title companies are not providing any type of customer resources be it ebooks or blogs to educate their customers.
Additionally, more than 60% of these 352 websites do not provide calculators or other web based tools to help visitors with closing cost estimates.
On the other hand, a lot of these companies are happy to receive title orders from visitors. This is why a majority of these companies have order forms on their sites to capture orders from customers.
Interestingly, the majority of title websites are seen to be mobile friendly and exhibited satisfactory mobile experience.
We believe that title websites must look beyond receiving orders from visitors and focus on offering tools and resources that can educate, engage, and help visitors with price calculations and quotes, which potentially goes a long way to acquire customers.
The trustworthiness of the title website:
The second factor with title websites is their ability to showcase their trustworthiness. Title transfer is a lot of about trust and transparency and these features are the key determiners.
The first sign of trustworthiness is client testimonials. Testimonials provide a lot of context into the service quality as well as the title company’s commitment towards getting the job done.
We have seen that majority of the sites do not feature any testimonials whatsoever. A lot of websites have listed their services on their sites to show their competence but the absence of testimonials makes it difficult to prove their worthiness for the job.
We found only 34.1% of websites showcasing testimonials
Another major aspect of trustworthiness is title websites showcasing individual members with their experience listed against their profiles. We have seen that a majority of the sites have done that which is a good thing to do.
Last but not least, we decided to consider their online footprint and reputations across the web as a parameter of trust. We have seen almost 2/3rd of the sites in our sample do not have a credible online footprint. We have also observed that websites with more than 15 google reviews, with most being positive, are generally the ones that provide satisfactory service.
We hope you find these insights useful. You may download the complete survey here to learn more.
