BB&T Remains atop Servicer Satisfaction List.

Byline: Ted Cornwell

Westlake Village, CA-Overall customer satisfaction with their mortgage servicer has dropped for the second straight year, according to J.D. Power and Associates, but primarily prime mortgage companies continue to score well. For the second year in a row, BB&T received the highest marks from customers, according to J.D. Power.

On a 1,000-point scale, overall customer satisfaction with the company servicing their home loan dropped 14 points to 784 in this year's survey. The recent high score came in 2006, when overall satisfaction measured 812. Ironically, the decline in customer satisfaction comes at a time when data from the Mortgage Bankers Association show that lenders are spending more money to service each loan.

Increased billing errors, more service "hand offs" and a larger number of customers making late payments all contributed to lower satisfaction levels, according to J.D. Power.

The survey measures customer satisfaction with billing, payments, contact with the lender and annual account administration.

For most customers, their mortgage servicer is akin to a utility company. All they really want is a "friction-free experience," according to J.D. Power. If they run into bumps in the road that require customers to spend time asking questions or solving problems, that results in lower satisfaction, especially if customers have to call their servicer more than once to get something resolved.

Once again, the J.D. Power study found that increasing customer adoption of electronic billing and payments is key to raising customer satisfaction rankings. And adoption of electronic billing is rising. Fifty-six percent of respondents in the survey said they make payments through an automatic deduction or website, compared with 36% who make payments by mail. Two years earlier, just 49% of customers made payments electronically, while 42% paid via mail.