Proficient Turns Site Visits into Business Prospects.(Proficient Systems Inc.)

NEW YORK -- Proficient Systems believes many lenders may be overlooking a goldmine of potential leads: their own websites.

The company has developed technology that is designed to help lenders capture more leads from consumers visiting a company's website in search of loan or product information by interjecting a human touch to interact with the most promising website visitors.

Jackson Wilson, chief technology officer, told Mortgage Servicing News that many financial institutions were frustrated by early results from their self-service websites. "People weren't converting at the rates that had been predicted," he said.

While the Internet has proven to be a wonderful marketing tool for commodities like books, music and tickets, it was more difficult to convert prospects for "considered goods" where consumers needed some consultation to decide which option works for them, he said. "It's not often that I refinance my mortgage. It's not often that I buy an insurance policy," Mr. Wilson noted.

These "considered goods" are sold by loan officers and insurance agents that can educate the buyer about options available to them. People often don't trust themselves making decisions alone about "considered goods," so they rely upon an expert rather than just a sales person to guide them through the process. That was a limitation on self-service websites.

By using intelligence to add a proactive "chat" feature to websites, Proficient allows a human expert to start a conversation with a visitor to the site who has been identified as a prospective customer.

This represents a new generation of websites, which are more focused on identifying and reaching potential clients than the self-service sites that financial institutions initially created. The chat technology functions in a manner similar to an 800 number, Mr. Jackson said.