Customer Success Manager - Mortgage

Title: Customer Success Manager - Mortgage Location: United States What is Loancrate? We started Loancrate to make home-buying simpler and less expensive for lenders and borrowers. Today, mortgage lenders are stuck running their companies on software products built 20 years ago. These products are slow, unstable, and don't lead to material improvements in efficiency. When using these systems, the average human cost to originate a loan is still over $11,000. Loancrate builds AI-native tooling to automate mortgage workflows. Our ultimate goal is fully automated origination, which has the potential to save lenders over $16B in operating expense per year. Since starting in 2020, our remote team has enabled our customers to power >$85 billion in new home loans. We care about collaboration, very open communication covering the good & the bad so that we learn from our decisions quickly, and ultimately having fun while we're building. You'll fit in well if you like diving deep quickly! The Opportunity A great loan origination system doesn't sell itself, install itself, or teach itself. It gets adopted because someone on our side sits shoulder-to-shoulder with the lender, speaks their language fluently, and knows exactly what a Loan Officer, processor, or team lead is actually trying to do at 4:47pm on a Friday with a rate lock about to expire. We're looking for a Customer Success Manager to be that person. You'll be the trusted advisor to our lender customers from day one of implementation through long after go-live. Your job is to help each customer see how their current workflows map into Loancrate, recommend the right way to set things up, answer product questions in real time, handle the inevitable "but we do it this way today" objections, and keep the relationship strong once they're live. You won't be running the project plan - we have a separate team that owns that - but you will be the mortgage-fluent voice in every customer conversation and the reason lenders stay confident, engaged, and moving forward. Because our product sits at the center of how our customers originate loans, you have to be able to have a real mortgage conversation on day one - not "learning the space as you go," but already fluent in it. We can teach you the CSM playbook. What we can't do in any reasonable timeframe is teach the depth of mortgage context this role requires. This is a foundational role. You'll shape how Loancrate advises and supports every customer, help build the playbook that future CSMs will follow, and be one of the loudest voices carrying customer reality back into Product and Engineering. If you've spent years inside a lender in a customer-facing seat and want to put that expertise toward building something rather than closing files one at a time, this is that opportunity. What You'll Do - Own the customer relationship from kickoff through go-live and beyond - you're the face of Loancrate to your lenders, and the person they call first. - Advise on implementation from the mortgage seat - take a lender's current-system processes, translate them into how Loancrate should be configured, and recommend the setup that will actually work for their business. - Answer product questions in real time - from LOs, processors, ops leaders, and executives - and be fluent enough to do it without a warm handoff. - Handle objections and keep customers moving - when a lender pushes back with "this is a hard requirement" or "our other vendor does this today," you're the person who can have that conversation, explain how other lenders solve it, and get to yes. - Sell the ongoing value of Loancrate through implementation - implementations can be long, and part of this role is keeping lenders bought in and enthusiastic all the way to go-live. - Be the trusted post-go-live partner - you'll already know how the lender is configured, what decisions were made, and why. Once they're live, you stay on as their CSM, their coach, and their first call. - Be the mortgage voice of the customer internally - package up requests, edge cases, and pain points into clear feedback for Product and Engineering, and push back thoughtfully when a customer ask isn't the right move. - Support the sales motion - as we bring on new customers, help run product demos and speak to prospects in their own language. - Help build the playbook - advisory frameworks, common configuration recommendations, objection-handling guides, and the account artifacts future CSMs will inherit. - Willingness to travel - expect approximately once-a-month domestic US travel to customer sites, with occasional additional trips around key milestones. What Success Looks Like Within your first 90 days, you will: - Be the primary customer-facing CSM on at least one live lender account, with a clear grasp of their workflows, pain points, and configuration decisions. - Be trusted by the customer as their go-to for product and mortgage questions - not a routing layer, but someone who can actually answer. - Have shown you can handle a hard customer conversation - an objection, a pushback, a "we need this or we can't go live" moment - and move the customer forward. - Have a direct working relationship with Product and Engineering, with a regular cadence for customer feedback and product questions. By the 12-18 month mark, you'll be a trusted operator across your book of business and a candidate to help build and lead the broader Customer Success function as we scale. Required Skills and Background 🏦 Direct mortgage lender experience - you've worked at an actual lender, not only a mortgage tech company, for at least 2-3 years. 🤝 Customer/borrower-facing experience - you've been the person on the phone or in the inbox with borrowers and referral partners, not exclusively working behind the scenes on files. 🗣️ Consultative, sales-minded instincts - you're comfortable being persuasive, handling objections, selling against adversity, and pushing back when a customer asks for something that isn't the right move. You've done this naturally with borrowers who were rate-shopping or partners who were comparing you to a competitor. 💼 Deep fluency in the mortgage lifecycle - application through funding. You know what a 1003, LE, CD, AUS finding, condition, and lock extension are without needing to look them up, and you can talk shop with LOs, processors, and ops leaders. 🎯 CSM, AM, or SDR experience at a mortgage tech company - ideal but not required. If you've done customer success, onboarding, or account management at a mortgage software vendor after your time at a lender, that's the profile we're most excited about. 🧠 Hands-on experience with a loan origination system (Encompass, Empower, Byte, etc.) - you've lived inside one and know where they help and where they get in the way. 📝 Clear written and verbal communication - customers, execs, and internal partners will read what you write and act on it. It has to be precise and easy to follow. 🎤 Comfort in front of customers and prospects - running working sessions, giving product demos, and being the voice in the room when it matters. 🚀 Bias to action and comfort with ambiguity - we're building the CS function from the ground up. You'll be figuring things out, not inheriting a machine. 🤖 Curiosity about AI and how it's changing mortgage workflows - you don't need an ML background, but you should be excited to help customers get value from AI-driven features and to help us shape them. Perks & Benefits · Robust medical coverage (100% of employee + family premiums covered) · Vision & dental coverage · 401(k) · HSA / FSA · Access to lender partner's employee loan program · Remote-first culture - work from wherever you do your best work · Flexible time off - we trust you to manage your time Loancrate is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.