I am a firm believer in the benefits of manual submission of finance leads. The general trend has been to either move away from manual submission completely, or at least penalise finance affiliates who still want to do it.
I can understand that from a merchant’s point of view they want the leads the second they are generated. Fair enough. I can also understand that auto-submission reduces the amount of fraudulent leads from fraudulent finance affiliates trying to make a ‘fast buck’. At the same time it can help with compliance issues.
However, for an honest finance affiliate (like myself), the move away from manual lead submission is an annoying set of circumstances to say the least. I, like many other finance affiliates, am fully compliant, provide very good quality leads and have been doing manual lead submission for years with no problems.
We are unfortunately finding ourselves caught in the crossfire in the merchants’ attack on the non-compliant fraudsters.
I actually believe manual submission, when used by a finance affiliate with a good track record and reputation, can actually IMPROVE conversions, and I have some examples to back this up:
1) Muddled names:
This happens about once a month - an applicant will enter their surname in the first name box, and vice versa. So for an auto-submitted lead, the merchant will see ‘Mr Smith John’. Now you would think that most call centre operators would have enough brains NOT to ask for ‘Mr John’, but I’ve worked in call centres, and I’ve seen it happen first hand. When the name is unusual or foreign, it compounds the problem, and a lead can be lost in the first 5 seconds.
With manual submission, these problems can be rectified before the lead reaches the merchant, by looking at the email address, or online directory enquiries if needed.
2) Date of Birth:
I’ve lost count of the number of people who put 2008 as their year of birth. Finance applicants are getting younger and younger these days!
In auto-submission, this lead will be rejected by the merchant. Manual submission - all it takes is a quick email to the applicant to check the correct date of birth.
3) The added ‘zero’:
Another one which crops up fairly regularly. Some people think that a ‘thousand’ is represented by 4 zeros. So, instead of £20,000, they will write £20,0000. With manual submission this sort of mistake can be caught before the merchant gets the lead, using simple common sense and maybe a quick email to check. With auto-submission, this error can muck up something important like the LTV, and the lead gets rejected or goes to the wrong merchant.
4) LTV/Unrealistic house value:
Now and again, maybe due to a typo, or the added zero mistake described above, a homeowner will put a completely unrealistic house value. It could even be that they miss off a zero by mistake. These mistakes are glaringly obvious to the trained eye, but an auto-submit form is not guaranteed to pick them up, and a lead can be lost because it doesn’t appear to fit the LTV requirements.
Okay, so we may be only talking about one lead a week, but in the current credit crunch climate finance affiliates really need to make the most of every lead they generate.
5) Overall customer experience:
Some people who obviously only use a keyboard once in a blue moon make hundreds of errors in one application. Many of these will not be picked up by an auto-submit form, and even if they are, they will basically be asking the applicant to re-submit most of the details. Applicants are impatient - if asked to constantly re-submit details they will get bored, frustrated and go elsewhere - another good finance lead lost. Examples:
- Wrong email address, eg johnsmith@hotmial.co (amazing how many times this sort of thing crops up). But not as often as - johnsmith’hotmail.com (inverted comma used instead of @)
- Phone number with a o instead of a 0
- Postcode with a o instead of a 0, or the other way round, eg P021 5RA
6) Gender Confusion
Occasionally a finance affiliate will receive a lead where the ‘title’ is blatantly wrong. e.g. Mr Sarah Smith. Not a problem on the surface, but an unusual name or one which could be either male or female, eg Kim, Lesley, and the call centre operative suddenly runs into trouble. ‘Can I speak to Mr Smith please?’ ‘No, I’m divorced’ replies Mrs Smith. Lead potentially lost in the first few seconds of the phone call.
Manual submission makes it easy to correct this type of lead to ensure the call centre isn’t confused. For instance, if the same lead leaves a maiden name, or ‘housewife’ as occupation, common sense tells you it’s a woman. Auto-submit runs into difficulty with this type of lead, which crops up for me about once a week.
7) Blatantly invalid phone numbers
For whatever reason, some people like to leave false phone numbers that look like real ones to an auto-submission service (ie they have the correct amount of digits and the correct regional code)
eg. 01611111111
eg. 07000000000
It may be that the lead only wants to be contacted by email. Or maybe they don’t have a home phone number but the auto-submit form forces them to submit a false one.
Whatever the reason, this lead is going to the merchant and it is going to waste their time. With manual submission, this type of lead is easy to spot and it will not go to the merchant. A quick email to the applicant (assuming they have left a valid email address) has often yielded a valid contact phone number, and turned a dud lead into a potential conversion.
Conclusion
Auto-submission looks like it is here to stay, and I can fully understand why.
However, for proven affiliates, I don’t think manual submission should be eradicated completely, because I firmly believe that a human ‘filter’ between applicant and merchant can work much better than any automated filter, and actually IMPROVE merchant finance lead conversions.
Any comments are most welcome…I know it’s a highly-debated topic!
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