Empowering homeowners with Haven
PRODUCT STRATEGY & DESIGN
We partnered with Haven to create a content system aimed at sparking homeowner engagement with lenders.
If you’ve bought a home in the United States, you’ll appreciate what Haven is doing. Typically, lenders transfer mortgage servicing rights to a third party. That means the initial relationship between homeowner and lender is interrupted. Haven reconnects lenders and homeowners by bringing servicing back into the lender’s online presence. When homeowners have questions around escrow, insurance, equity usage, or refinancing, Haven enables lending partners to educate and engage homeowners. Homeowners feel supported and lenders maintain a longer-term relationship.
The challenge: a transactional mindset
Our challenge was to find ways to encourage engagement amongst homeowners who typically enter these experiences with a transactional mindset.
Mortgage servicing experiences are built for paying your mortgage, not engagement. Homeowners don’t recognize their mortgage servicing brand, and have little reason to trust them. By connecting servicing back into lending, Haven is beginning to change this dynamic. Re-establishing the connection between homeowner and lending partner opens the door to deeper engagement that benefits everyone. Still, homeowners are not accustomed to this deeper experience.
The solution: lightweight, personalized engagement
We developed two features in particular: a Help With Your Goals content block that dynamically pulls in content related to the homeowner’s chosen goals, and a Projected Equity graph that helps homeowners visualize their home’s future financial potential.
We began by testing several concepts to find an entry point for engagement. Our research showed us that homeowners wanted to learn more about their mortgage, but lacked both time and understanding. Mortgage terms can be confusing. Spending time learning about what they mean, and how they apply to your situation, is too big a hurdle for many homeowners.
The content system we created solved for both of these challenges by introducing short-form content, along with calculators and other tools to illustrate how these concepts apply to a homeowner’s specific situation. We also curated content based on the homeowner’s goal to ensure relevancy. This lightweight, personalized approach aimed to spark initial interest and open the door to deeper engagement.
The impact: a happy client
While we await the full results of these two launches, here’s a few words from Haven’s Head of Product Design, Brian Milner.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with Outpost over the last year, and I can confidently say that their contributions have been invaluable to our company strategy. Together, they form a dynamic duo that has significantly elevated the quality of our work. Their synergy is evident in the seamless integration of design and strategy, resulting in products that are highly effective in achieving our business goals. Their commitment to excellence, combined with their collaborative spirit, makes them a valuable asset to any team.
They’re not only outstanding professionals but also great collaborators who bring positive energy and a solutions-oriented mindset to every project. I highly recommend Outpost for their exceptional talent and unwavering dedication to delivering top-notch results. Count yourself lucky if you have the opportunity to work with this great team.
(Thanks, Brian. We loved working with you, too!)