Playbook, mortgage broker
Open until eight, and nothing can be submitted after five
A broker keeps hours that suit people who work, which means the busiest part of the week is often the part where nothing can actually be progressed. Advice, a fact find and a document review all happen fine at half past seven. Submitting to a lender, chasing a valuer or getting an answer out of an underwriter do not. An hours page that gives one set of times answers half the question and quietly misleads on the other half.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for opening hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The firm's own hours and the hours in which a case can move are different things, so an applicant can have a full appointment in the evening and still be told nothing will reach a lender until the morning.
- Products are withdrawn at short notice and the announcements tend to land late in the day, which turns a question about opening hours into a question about whether something can be secured before it goes.
- A remortgage client whose existing deal ends on a date, or a buyer working to an exchange date, asks an urgent question in the same words as somebody idly wondering if anyone is about, and the material has to let the assistant tell them apart.
- Uploads, forms and messages can all be dealt with at any hour, so a good deal of what an applicant needs to do is genuinely available when the office is closed, and saying so converts a wait into progress.
How it arrives
- are you open in the evenings
- can i speak to an adviser at the weekend
- is there anyone there to submit my application today
- my current deal ends soon can you still do anything
- what time do the lenders stop for the day
- do you pick messages up at night
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Two sets of hours, labelled for what they are | When an adviser is available to speak, and when the firm can actually progress a case with third parties. Publishing them separately is the whole point, because one page with one set of times is what creates the false expectation. |
|---|---|
| What an applicant can usefully do outside those hours | Uploading documents, completing a form, sending a message. Framed as work that moves the case, since somebody told the office is shut will otherwise do nothing at all until the morning. |
| How you handle a case with a date attached to it | The wording for somebody whose existing deal is ending or whose exchange is booked, and what you want them to do rather than wait. This is the material that keeps a genuinely urgent message from sitting in a queue overnight. |
| Your out of hours fallback, in the firm's voice | The message shown when nothing else fits, saying when somebody will respond and what to leave. Write it as a person would say it at ten at night, because that is when it is read. |
The reply
There are two answers to that. Advisers here take calls into the evening, so you can have a full conversation outside working hours [1]. What cannot happen at that time is anything needing a lender or a valuer, because their own desks are closed, so an application discussed at seven goes in the following morning [2]. You can upload documents whenever it suits you and they will be waiting. I cannot tell you what you could borrow or what is available today, and I cannot check whether a particular product is still open. If your current deal is ending soon, leave your name and an email and say so, and somebody will call you rather than reply.
It gives the two clocks in the first two sentences because that distinction is the actual question underneath. Pointing at the upload turns a closed office into something the applicant can act on tonight. The last line is deliberately different from the general handover, since a deal ending on a date deserves to jump a queue and the material should let it.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor mentions a deal ending, an exchange or completion date, or asks whether a particular product can still be secured before it is withdrawn.
That one is worth a call rather than a message. I cannot see what is available or hold anything open. Leave your name, your email and the date you are working to and an adviser will ring you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a product is still available or can be secured tonight, because availability sits with the lender and can change without any notice reaching the firm.
- Never promise a call back at a stated time, since the assistant has no diary, no view of who is on shift and no way to book anybody.
- Never imply an application can be submitted or a decision obtained outside a lender's own working hours.
- Never treat a message about a deal ending as an ordinary enquiry, when the published material can tell it to route straight to a person.
Questions
- Does it book the evening appointment while somebody is asking about hours?
- No. It writes into no calendar. It states when advisers are available, then takes a name, an email and a message that arrives with your team. That is enough for a firm that rings people back rather than one running a booking page.
- Is publishing the lender cut off unhelpful for us?
- It stops a much worse conversation. A client who was told the firm is open until eight and then finds their application sat until morning believes something went wrong. One published sentence about third party hours prevents that entirely.
- Can it flag an urgent message so we see it first?
- It cannot sort or prioritise anything on your side, since every enquiry arrives as an email to the same address. What it can do is tell the applicant plainly to say in the message that their deal is ending, so the urgency is visible when your team reads it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a mortgage brokerProcess, documents and fees are safe to automate. Rates go stale fast and affordability cannot be answered generically.
- Handling opening hours in generalHolidays, seasonal variation, last orders and multiple sites. Keeping one source of truth so the assistant and your map listing agree.
- The address on the site is rarely the address anybody needsMost mortgage advice never happens in a room, so where are you usually means do I have to come in and where do original documents go.
- The portal is where the access problem is, not the front doorThe upload step is the barrier, the fact find runs long, and a joint applicant cannot be spoken for unless the firm has recorded it.
- An estate agency wants to know how the firm holds a client's paperworkIntroducers vet the firms they refer to. The questions are about payslips, statements and identity documents sitting together in one place.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.