The challenges

A complex team overwhelmed by demand

Churchill Mortgage was on a mission to make financially savvy homeownership accessible to everyone. But with demand for their services peaking across the United States, Churchill’s manual processes became overwhelming.

Churchill Mortgage is an employee-owned mortgage lender with licensed professionals in 49 states. Not only did their support team need to quickly connect callers with an available Home Loan Specialist, but they also needed to make sure the customer was matched to a professional who was licensed to originate a loan in their state.

Director of Client Engagement Nancy McMahan led efforts to develop a more client-friendly intake process.

“We receive hundreds of calls per week—we’re very blessed with that,” she says. “Before Calendly, our support team would have to put the customer on hold until they reached a Home Loan Specialist to make a live transfer. “If no one was available, the support team rep would have to ask the customer, ‘What’s the best time to call you back?’ Then they’d email the Home Loan Specialist with the callback information.”

It was a slow and frustrating process for everyone.

To help customers connect with the right Home Loan Specialist faster, and free the Churchill team from unproductive manual scheduling, Nancy and her team started developing an online self-service system.

This is when Churchill first implemented Calendly’s scheduling automation platform, starting with simple scheduling links.

“At Churchill, our motto is, ‘Doing what’s right for you,’ so we’re constantly striving to make our customer experience better,” Nancy says. “We wanted to let our customers choose how they communicate with us, and Calendly let us do that.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, spiking call volumes made it more urgent to ease the pressure by scaling up the self-serve interface.

“We had more phone calls and appointments than any company could handle. It was overwhelming, but we were determined to provide legendary customer care to each and every person.”

Knowing it was critical to multiply their team’s reach while maintaining a client-centered experience, Churchill doubled down on Calendly. 

They leveraged Calendly’s full suite of tools and automations to help more clients with an even higher standard of customer care.

The solutions

A customer-driven automated experience

Although peaking demand increased the strain on Churchill’s scheduling and service capacity, Calendly eased it with integrations and its Workflows feature for reminders and follow-up notifications.

“We were pushed to capacity during the pandemic and had to pivot like everyone else. Thankfully, Calendly helped us change our perspective and expand our self-service approach,” Nancy says.

With customer expectations evolving, being able to deliver a smooth online experience was key.

“In today’s environment, if a customer doesn’t get a prompt callback, they get frustrated and will probably call someone else. Being able to serve them quickly means we don’t lose those opportunities.”

Streamlining with workflows and integrations

Calendly’s customizable features powered a satisfying web interface for Churchill’s customers.

With Team Pages, customers can indicate their home state and schedule a meeting with a Home Loan Specialist who’s licensed in their state.

Behind the scenes, the Round Robin feature automatically directs customers to first-available team members. This eliminates long wait times and helps the team manage client distribution.

Once meetings are booked, Workflows including automated email and text reminders help Home Loan Specialists stay in touch with clients to make sure everyone is on the same page.

“People enjoy getting the meeting automatically on their calendar, receiving reminders, and knowing what to expect. Our team appreciates it, too, because there's less chance of missed appointments.”

How Calendly delivered 1,037% ROI for Churchill Mortgage

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Seamless routing from an affiliate’s website

One of the most interesting ways Churchill is implementing Calendly is through their advertising with finance thought leader Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions.

With Website Embed and Routing Forms, Churchill can offer the same personalized schedules and communications to prospects on the Ramsey website.

“We are the only lender that Ramsey Solutions talks about,” Nancy says. “People can fill out a contact form on their website to connect with us. With Calendly’s API, that information comes over to our system and the customer gets immediately routed into the right Home Loan Specialist’s pipeline. It’s been a game-changer.”

This affiliation is an important source of inbound leads for Churchill.

A thrilling uptick in efficiency

Compared to the old process, where a support team rep would have to make multiple calls and try to manually connect each customer with a Home Loan Specialist, the automated scheduling links and customized routing have eliminated enormous amounts of manual work.

“Before, it was up to our support team to look up each Home Loan Specialist’s time zone and availability and try to find a match. There were so many steps. But now, it’s effortless.”

Using integrations with Zoom—as well as Microsoft 365, Teams, and Outlook—data never needs to be re-entered into other tools, multiplying the time savings even further.

“With the Outlook integration, Home Loan Specialists don’t even have to go into the Calendly system if they don’t want to. As long as they keep their Outlook calendar up-to-date, their Calendly links will offer the availability they want.”

High adoption across the company

It didn’t take long for the whole company to get on board with Calendly.

They started with a pilot group of just eight users, but with the support team, Home Loan Specialists, and marketing professionals catching on, more than 300 people now use the scheduling links and automations every day.

“We now have Calendly as part of our onboarding process. Many of our team members include the links in their email signatures, as well as on their individual websites. We also use Calendly links in our corporate email campaigns, for everything from the initial client welcome touch point to promoting our annual mortgage reviews. The links are essential for all of our users.”

For Churchill’s Home Loan Specialists, the impact has been profound.

“Our Home Loan Specialists are commission-based, and so they are very protective of their time,” Nancy says. “Once I was able to show that Calendly helps them control their daily schedule, they were sold.”

They stay in a productive zone longer, because they can set up their link to automatically reserve certain time blocks for new business and renewal meetings.

And never having to worry about an unexpected meeting during vacation time or at a ridiculous hour relieves enormous stress, helping them build the business lives they want. 

With such a beautifully customized solution to their scheduling problems, it’s no wonder Churchill has embraced Calendly wholeheartedly.

The results

1,037% ROI and 26,767 hours saved so far

By using Calendly’s scheduling automations to transform operations, Churchill Mortgage saved 26,767 hours and realized a spectacular 1,037% ROI within one year.

“By recovering that time spent on back-and-forth for scheduling, automating reminders, and reducing missed appointments, we saved roughly 10,789 hours last year,” Nancy says. “Using the industry average of a loan officer’s income, that works out to $415,269 worth of value in just one year.”

If you consider the opportunities that are no longer being lost due to customers getting frustrated by long wait times, the returns are even higher. 

Calendly’s flexible automations and integrations have helped Churchill deliver more service during peak demand and set themselves up to thrive into the future.

With strategic scheduling across their complex teams and a customized connection that welcomes leads from their affiliate’s website, Churchill is empowering more hopeful homeowners with less strain. They’ve delivered an outstanding customer experience on over 107,066 meetings so far.

“Calendly lets you truly customize the way you interact with customers,” Nancy says. “Within a large company, you can keep it simple or you can go in-depth and make it do whatever you want. Either way, you get incredible benefits.”

Ready to explore what Calendly can do for your bottom line? Sign up for a free, 14-day trial today.

To learn more about the paid features Churchill Mortgage uses – such as, Round Robin, Workflows, and more – contact our Sales team.