A day in the life of senior customer experience expert, Ellie Thurston
I’m part of the customer experience team at Habito. When you hit the online chat button on our website, you’ll probably come through to me! I spend my days talking to people on live chat, helping them make sense of mortgages in general, and how Habito can help!
I like to get in early, at around 8.30am so I have time to answer any messages customers have left us overnight. Then I make myself a strong coffee and get pumped and ready for when the live chats start rolling in at 9am.
First impressions are everything and sometimes being a customer’s first point of contact can be pretty demanding! We get asked all sorts of questions and talk to all sorts of people: from first-time buyers who aren’t sure what a mortgage is, all the way to portfolio landlords who really know their stuff. I have to be ready to problem solve fast and think on my feet, and make sure customers aren’t left waiting too long for an answer.
We’ve grown rapidly over the 18 months I’ve worked for Habito and we get more and more customers coming on to the site every day. But I still have an average response time of 30 seconds, so I’m pretty happy with that!
While all these chats from new customers are happening, I’m also managing chats for all our existing customers who are ready for mortgage advice, matching them each to the right broker. Multitasking is key.
It’s a fast-paced, busy job but there are definitely perks. Our customer is always the priority and live chats can come through at any time, which means I get to skip the queue for the free lunch we get at Habito every day. My colleagues will often see me go sprinting past them to grab a plate of food before disappearing back upstairs… especially on lasagna day!
I sit in our customer operations team, but I also work with teams all across Habito, helping them think about things from a customer’s point of view so that together we can improve the whole service for people.
I learn something new every day doing this job, which is a big change from any other job I’ve had. Often in other roles, I’d find myself falling into a routine, but that just doesn’t happen here at Habito — you don’t have the chance!
