A new study finds that mortgage services fail to deliver key service practices more often during the loan modification process than during the loan origination process, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

Among the best practices that mortgage services often fail to deliver include: Providing and meeting a time frame for approval; not requesting information more than once; explaining the entire process during application; and providing proactive status updates during the process.

The study measures customer satisfaction with five areas of the mortgage-servicing experience: fees; billing and payment process; escrow account administration; Web site; and phone contact.  The study also finds that customers with higher levels of satisfaction may lead to higher levels of loyalty and retention.  Among customers in the prime credit segment, 34 percent of those who are highly satisfied (credit scores of 800 or higher) say they “definitely will” recommend their servicer—compared with 6 percent of customers with lower satisfaction scores.  Similarly, 27 percent of highly satisfied prime credit customers say they “definitely will” select their servicer for a new home mortgage, while 6 percent of less-satisfied customers say the same.