The Quiet Years

BAYVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT, LLC

Bayview asset management logo

As most people know, the Great Recession lasted far longer than anyone expected. Our parent company, Bayview Asset Management, was well-positioned to help during the massive increase in mortgage defaults. Bayview Loan Servicing was created to be an internal resource to handle defaulting customers from loans originated by Silver Hill and Interbay. They were a very small team, but extremely effective at helping mortgage holders modify their terms so that they could get back to affordable payments or facilitate an amicable sale of the property.

I was retained by the company to build a client relationship function because the loan servicing group was suddenly inundated with requests to service loans. I developed processes to facilitate negotiations, onboard loans, and ensure approvals and communications were done effectively. I also created the Reputation Management Council to monitor online comments and recorded calls so that we could analyze the causal factors behind complaints and address them immediately. (When someone gets behind on their payments they can be very frustrated and strike out in anger through many channels - even if you are working diligently to help them get back on their feet.) I also became the liaison between BLS and other default servicing companies, including representing our interests in Washington DC.

At this point in my career, much of my work became privileged information. When we became SEC Investment Advisors I was also cut off from speaking at conferences, maintaining my blog, publishing any new books, etc. As a senior executive in the company, our Legal team took a very conservative approach and feared that anything I said could be taken as advice or an indicator of the health of our company, industry, or the mortgage market in general. It took a great deal of negotiation with Compliance to get approval for the publication of my roles and select EX and CX accomplishments on LinkedIn:

FIRST VICE PRESIDENT

July 2014 - August 2019 · 5 yrs 2 mos

Led the teams focused on knowledge, performance, engagement, innovation, and digital transformation.

Employee Experience Results

  • Revised new hire curriculum in late 2018 improved call monitoring scores for new hires from 90.1% in Dec to 95.0% in Mar and outbound promises kept from 60.5% to 71.9%

  • Selected and launched a new learning management system to support streamlined content delivery to front-line staff

  • Built a database of FAQs as a performance support tool for employees, improving handle time by 12% and first call resolution by 10%

  • Transformed marketing team from disengaged processors to accountable creatives with business acumen

  • Transformed operations trainers from subject matter experts to professional trainers and performance consultants

  • Sourced, attracted, screened, selected, and managed early-career high potentials that were constantly promoted into other areas or related companies

Customer Experience

  • Executed the 2019 communications strategy and plan, resulting in increases of 16% in website registrations, 15.5% opt-ins for email, 14% opt-ins for paperless, and 47% opt-ins for text for prime customers from Jan to Jun

  • Spearheaded design, development, and launch of a robust website that enabled self-service-immediately reducing calls by 18% in one month (which moved abandonment from 15.6% to 5.1% and ASA from 57 to 25 seconds from Dec to May)

  • Designed and implemented a complaint management system and program; segmentation of the complaint data and bi-weekly root cause analysis meetings reduced complaints per loan by 90% each year

  • Multivariate A:B testing resulted in response improvements for several key letters

  • Developed conversation guides based on customer personas

  • Segmented customers and designed landing pages, how-to guides, and online videos-reducing call and correspondence volumeLed the teams focused on knowledge, performance, engagement, innovation, and digital transformation.

HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCE

August 2011 - July 2014 · 3 yrs

Transformed HR by focusing on the employee experience.

Employee Experience Results

  • Created an analytics and insights program for leaders-including data covering unscheduled time off and voice of the employee pulse surveys segmented by org, site, season, vintage, training, performance, etc.

  • Won every litigation and arbitration case and passed every regulatory and client audit

  • Focused on the candidate experience as headcount grew from 1,010 to 1,891-including online reputation management, transparency in job posting and interviews, journey maps through the first 90 days and surveys at friction points-resulting in a 21% decrease in time to start and a 3x boost in time-to-productive

  • Improved hiring practices led to an 83% increase in productivity

  • Completed research on factors impacting employee engagement in 2011 and designed an assessment to identify gaps, then built communities of employees to co-create solutions for each gap that they had influence over; applied for Fortune's Best Places to Work in 2012 and earned Great Rated! status

  • Applied CX principles and practices to HR by creating employee journey maps, voice of the employee surveys (as well as exit surveys and stay surveys), and facilitated critical incident methodology to find out what was truly important to HR's customers

  • Developed behaviorally-anchored rating scales (BARS) to measure employee satisfaction with HR (3.6 in Jan to 4.2 in Nov)

  • Designed high potential rotational program

Customer Experience Results

  • Designed the Reputation Management Council to monitor each Bayview company's online reputation, identify and resolve customer complaints, and launch customer-centric initiatives

  • Designed and managed the project plan to develop a new company, Lakeview Loan Servicing

  • Actively addressed customer concerns by eliminating fake Facebook pages, meeting with the local BBB franchise, and contacting Yelp reviewers

  • Collaborated on the design and launch of a new company, Silver Hill Funding Transformed HR by focusing on the employee experience.

  • Applied CX principles and practices to HR by creating employee journey maps, voice of the employee surveys (as well as exit surveys and stay surveys), and facilitated critical incident methodology to find out what was truly important to HR's customers

VICE PRESIDENT HUMAN RESOURCE

February 2009 - August 2011 · 2 yrs 7 mos

Took ownership of key initiatives as the company reorganized following the securities market disruption.

Employee Experience Results


  • Established customer-centric employer brand in 2010 by translating the company tenets into Behaviorally-Anchored Rating Scales (reduced time to complete annual reviews by 80% and compliance with completion rose 37%) and building BARS for the servicing brand

  • Built customer journey maps for the servicing organization in 2009 that identified employees were the greatest friction points so position profiles were created for all key front-line positions and their managers, created C-SAT surveys and call monitoring guidelines based on BARS built from critical incident methodology results, and designed new incentive plans and KPIs for each position (training time reduced by 25% on average and time-to-productive dropped by 30 days)

  • Designed and delivered training using research into heuristics and cognitive bias to help employees handle calls more effectively in 2009

Customer Experience Results

  • Collaborated with the head of each department in the crafting of CX KPIs in 2010 and established a competition to gamify, resulting in a 37% increase in call attempts and right party contact, and after holding leaders accountable for the C-SAT and call monitoring scores, those rose from 62.2% to 75.2% in 90 days

  • Built customer personas for servicing in 2010 and converted into conversation trees with next best action based on goals and pain points

  • Took over management of marketing in 2009, defined servicing's voice and look/feel of collateral, added persuasive language to 120 letters and wrote new letter campaigns (first contact dropped from 59 to 40 days), drafted 'sales scripts' for the call centers, and built pitch decks for potential clients in partnership with McKinsey

  • Selected in 2009 to be the liaison for four rating agency reviews and a developing industry lobby called Hope Now

  • Worked as the servicing client's ombudsman to develop service level agreements with each bank