The willingness and ease of adopting new technology is tied to how that experience reduces or increases stress to the end user. When technology vendors and lender executives understand that dynamic, new mortgage technology can be implemented more effectively and with less resistance from employees, said Rene Rodriguez during a presentation at this week’s Mortgage Technology Conference in Miami.
Rodriguez is the CEO of education and consulting firm Volentum and also heads sales, marketing and brand strategy for PrimeSource Mortgage in New Mexico. Rodriguez is also the former CEO of mortgage technology vendor MortgageDashboard. A student of behavioral neuroscience, Rodriguez said people have a general tendency to react negatively to change, even if the change will improve their personal life, job or other aspect.
“It’s not a logical response, it’s an emotional response when we’re forced to do something and change,” he said.
Rodriguez said the difference in impact of asking a person to write with a different pen versus being asked to write with their nondominate hand is like the difference between continuous and discontinuous innovation. Technology innovation tends to be a more dramatic shift that’s disruptive to most people’s comfort zone.
While implemented correctly, new technology can save time, solve problems and make users feel more competent. But the wrong strategy can lead to chaos, result is lost time and efficiency, engender new problems and make users feel incompetent, Rodriguez said.
“Technology continually presents conditions or consequences that are diametrically opposite to each other,” he said.
To address this dynamic, technology vendors and lender executives must inspire end users, rather than use a manipulation dynamic. The former breeds longer-lasting results, while the later is a short-term impact.
For technology vendors, an effective inspirational strategy is to flip-flop their sales tactics. Instead of pitching users what they do, they should pitch why they do it, he said. Rodriguez cited the brand loyalty of Apple’s technology and Southwest Airlines as ways that companies have built an inspirational response to their products.
“Because we believe in why Apple does what it does, we buy their products,” he said. “We don’t buy what people do, we buy why people do it…Our messages are backwards with too little why.”
