Case Study

How First Mortgage Turned Its Phone System Into a Source of Insight

First Mortgage NE

Overview

First Mortgage is a free mortgage advice service with five high-street branches across the North East and more than 80 staff. Its model is deliberately face-to-face: every client gets a dedicated case handler paired with a specific advisor, with support covering protection, home insurance and complimentary will vouchers.

With five-star ratings from more than 30,000 Trustpilot reviews, customer service sits at the heart of the business. Having grown from around 15 staff to over 80 in roughly eight years, First Mortgage needed communications that could keep up.

The Challenge

First Mortgage had been with BT (Cloudwork) for its telephony for more than eight years. As the business grew, the limitations became harder to ignore:

Inflexible. The system was difficult to adapt or expand as the business changed.
Poor value. The business felt it was paying far too much for the service it received.
Hard to reach. Getting through to BT for support was difficult and unpredictable, with unresolved disputes over service delivery.
No data. There was no way to review call flows, spot patterns or make decisions based on evidence.
No visibility. The team had no real-time view of call volumes, answer rates or overflow.

For a business built on being easy to reach, a phone system it couldn't measure or control was a real problem.

We were paying exorbitant amounts for what we were getting. You can’t really get through to anyone when you do ring them. And we just thought, right, let’s go for something where we can actually get in touch with people.

Chris Adams, First Mortgage NE

The Solution

Smart IT moved First Mortgage onto Horizon, a cloud phone system designed around visibility and control, with Akixi call reporting and a new leased line.

Hands-on control. The Operations Manager now manages Horizon himself, adjusting hunt groups, overflow rules and caller settings, while our team handles larger changes through the helpdesk.

Live wallboards. Real-time wallboards in every branch show call volumes and answer rates as they happen.

Detailed call reporting. With Akixi, every call can now be analysed, turning the phone system into a source of insight rather than a black box.

Personal hunt groups. Each advisor and administrator pairing has its own number. Clients can call their case handler directly without going through the main menu, and calls overflow to the general admin line if both are busy.

Customer Feedback

Every time we need something, it’s just easy to get it sorted. There’s a difference between helping someone and hassling them, and Smart IT gets that.

Chris Adams, First Mortgage NE

The Result

Fewer missed calls. Akixi reporting showed that 15-second ring times before overflow were causing callers to hang up. After shortening those intervals and adjusting the overflow rules, missed calls fell from 25% in the first month, including teething issues, to around 10%, in line with the company target.

Smarter callbacks. The data showed that 29% of people who requested a callback through the website weren't answering. This is at least partly down to caller ID recognition, and the team is now working on branded calling to fix it.

Outbound insight. Across 12,000 outbound calls a month, 80 to 82% of clients answer. Of the rest, around 16% of all clients never answer however many attempts are made. That insight now shapes resourcing and follow-up.

Lower costs. The move delivered monthly savings compared with BT, and the leased line came in well below BT's quoted rate. The savings broadly offset First Mortgage's investment in other services.

A partner that's easy to work with. First Mortgage values responsiveness and honesty. Chris highlighted our approach of asking when suits for a call rather than chasing, and our willingness to come back promptly and resolve any issue without fuss. He has already recommended Smart IT to a contact who was looking for a new provider.