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Aithena empowers mortgage lenders to analyze 100% of calls, coach in real time, and predict closable deals with 89.4% accuracy—right from the first conversation. Drive empathy, elevate performance, and capture more revenue with AI + Human insight.
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00:00Welcome to HousingWire's Demo to OnDemand. I'm Alison LaForgia, Managing Editor of HousingWire's Content Studio, and in this session, we're featuring Josh Friend, the CEO of Encelerate.
00:10Josh highlights how Athena delivers real-time call scoring, live coaching, and empathy-driven insights, turning everyday conversations into high-converting opportunities.
00:20Learn how lenders are using AI to prioritize deals with 89% accuracy, scaling top-performer behaviors across teams, and capturing revenue that otherwise could have been lost.
00:33The future isn't AI-driven. It's AI plus human. Josh, take us through the demo of Encelerate's Athena.
00:40Excellent. Thanks for having me. First, just a little background. We're in the business of ultimately helping lenders close more loans. It's just where we got to Athena.
00:48A lot of people know us by our platform. In the past, what we've had is we serve all channels, retail, consumer direct, wholesale, TPO, reverse.
00:56And our core platform has been our CRM, lead management, engagement, integrate telephony.
01:01Now, what we're going to show you is Athena, which is a completely standalone system. You do not have to use the Encelerate CRM system for this.
01:06It can integrate the Salesforce and many other CRMs. But Athena has three different main things that she does.
01:12One is she does Athena's score. And that's AI lead score and a call review. So post-call, it actually listens to calls, reviews calls.
01:20Agent, Athena's agent is going to actually handle your calls, talk to your customers for you, be able to interact with your customers, make calls for you.
01:27Then Athena train, where you can actually train your loan officers to do their job and actually get them kind of up to speed faster on a call center setting.
01:35So what I want to show you first is I'm going to show you a little bit of a clip of a real live call training session.
01:42And so this is Athena's train. This is where a loan officer is actually calling in to work on their sales script and their pitch.
01:48And you have the AI, Athena, she's actually going to be doing some objections and taking someone through a loan application.
01:55Hello.
01:57Hi, this is Collegian with Ladera Lending. How are you doing today?
02:01I'm doing all right. Who did you say you were with again?
02:05Ladera Lending. We're a certified lender on the street.
02:10Ah, okay. Gotcha. I was just looking online to see what's available. Wasn't really expecting a call.
02:17Oh, yeah. No problem. We saw your inquiry. So just following up on your home equity cash out inquiry.
02:23I'm happy to go over all your options and answer any questions you may have.
02:27All right. Yeah. I mean, I'm open to hearing what you've got.
02:30Just want to make sure you guys are legit before I do anything, you know?
02:34Sure. Absolutely. I just sent you a text message with my direct contact information. Did you get that?
02:40Yeah. I see it here. All right. That helps.
02:43Yeah. That's my website. You can text or call me anytime.
02:47All right. Sounds good.
02:48Yeah. We're in California. Where are you located?
02:53I'm in Tennessee.
02:56Oh, Tennessee. Awesome. I was born in Tennessee.
03:00No kidding. Small world. What part?
03:02Yeah. Chattanooga, Tennessee.
03:04Nice. Oh, nice. I'm up here in Nashville. Not too far.
03:08Oh, Nashville's nice. Yeah, definitely.
03:10So how much cash out are you looking for?
03:14I was thinking maybe enough to knock out some debt and do a few things around the house.
03:19Nothing too crazy.
03:22Okay. What's your address?
03:25Sure. It's 1847 Willow Creek Drive, Franklin.
03:30Okay, great. Tell me a little bit about your house.
03:32Have you done any upgrades?
03:35Yeah, we've done a few things over the years.
03:37Updated the kitchen about two years ago.
03:39Put in new floors last summer.
03:42Still got a few projects we'd like to tackle, though.
03:47Great. Are you married?
03:50Yes, I am. My spouse's name is Em.
03:54I bet she loves the kitchen.
03:56Oh, yeah, she does. That was her project, really.
03:58I just wrote the checks.
04:00Yeah, my wife's been dying to remodel the kitchen.
04:06Yeah, once they get that idea in their head, it's happening one way or another.
04:12Definitely.
04:14Yeah, so where are you...
04:15Yep.
04:16I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions for the application here.
04:19Is that okay?
04:21Sure, that sounds fine.
04:24Where are you currently working?
04:27I work for a logistics company.
04:28I've been there a little over six years now.
04:34Okay, great.
04:34What's the name of the company?
04:36It's called Swift Transport Solutions.
04:41Oh, I've heard of Swift.
04:42They're huge.
04:44Yeah, they're pretty big.
04:45Keeps me busy, that's for sure.
04:48What's your title there?
04:51Operations manager.
04:52Oh, okay, great.
04:56And are you paid hourly or salary?
05:00Salary.
05:03And what's your annual salary?
05:05It's about 92 a year.
05:0992 a year.
05:10Okay.
05:10How long have you been there?
05:12Just over six years now.
05:15Just over six years.
05:16Okay, got it.
05:18And how about your wife?
05:19Where does she work?
05:21She works part-time at a dental office.
05:23Front desk stuff, mostly.
05:27Okay.
05:27Is she on hourly or salary?
05:30Hourly.
05:30So, as you can tell,
05:34Athena actually knows how a bar would actually interact.
05:37It throws a little humor in there
05:38to make some connection with your loan officer.
05:41But this is a great way to quickly scale up your loan officers,
05:45train them before they get on the phone with live calls.
05:48There was an objection, if you saw in the very beginning,
05:50where they were unsure of being able to do the loan,
05:52want to make sure they were the right person.
05:54The loan officer, you know,
05:55obviously texted some information and say,
05:57check us out.
05:58And what's great about this is there are many scenarios
06:02and it's very customizable and configurable.
06:04I mean, you can create different workflow calls
06:06for anything you want.
06:07You could actually build call training
06:09for teaching loan officers
06:11or reach out to real estate agents
06:12and ask them for their business for the first time.
06:14It also takes real live objections
06:16that happen on real sales calls
06:17and actually hits your loan officers
06:21with what are real objections they're actually handling.
06:24So that's a little bit of the Athena training piece.
06:27I want to go into a little bit
06:28of the score information as well.
06:30So on a high level,
06:31Athena's score has reviewed
06:33over a million interactions with consumers,
06:35over 250,000 hours of talk time.
06:39The score has been able to get reached
06:40to an 89.4% predictability model,
06:43meaning that we did this with cross-country mortgage
06:46and we're able to predict within the first phone call
06:49with almost a 90% accuracy rate
06:51whether or not they're going to close
06:52or buy a loan for cross-country mortgage.
06:54Pretty powerful, pretty impactful.
06:55Another thing Athena's score does
06:57is it gives an actual lead score
06:59between one to nine,
07:01basically how likely the customer
07:03is to close on a transaction.
07:04And what we found is the following.
07:06On average, we score a lead in eight to nine,
07:08our lenders are going to fund those at a 13.65%.
07:11If we score a lead of five to seven,
07:13you're going to fund that about an average 1.9%.
07:15If you score between one to four,
07:17you're going to fund that at 0.9%.
07:18Now the question is,
07:20what happens to the ones you don't fund?
07:21Well, those eights and nines,
07:23the loans that you don't fund,
07:2533% of those people will get a loan
07:26with another lender within 60 days
07:28versus a five to seven, it's 8%
07:30and one to four, it's less than 2%.
07:32So if you actually do the math,
07:34an eight, nine is about 50% of the people
07:36that get scored at eight or nine
07:37are actually going to transact
07:38within the next 60 days
07:40versus a five to seven is less than 10%
07:42and a one to four is less than 3%.
07:44It's really telling you where your business is at.
07:47So in times like now,
07:48when rates drop
07:49and some people really qualify
07:50and some people don't,
07:51this is really going to help you find out
07:53who's in the money,
07:54who should refinance
07:55and who should really move forward.
07:57Other things that Athena can do
07:59with Athena's score
08:00is give your sales managers
08:04and your team an overall dashboard
08:06of what's going on
08:07in the sales floor right now.
08:08So this is going to give you things
08:09like score trends.
08:09You take a look up here.
08:11So what this does is it scores your,
08:13you can score your whole company,
08:14individual loan officers,
08:15you can score them over times,
08:17over dates or months.
08:18And what this is saying is,
08:20hey, right now,
08:20everything's pretty good.
08:21Everyone's,
08:22all my scores are on average.
08:25But however,
08:25hesitation right now,
08:26there's been a company trend
08:27that people are a little more hesitant
08:28when they're pitching their loans.
08:30I can come in there
08:31and actually look at
08:31an individual loan officer if I want
08:33and see how is one individual loan officer
08:36doing maybe this month or this week.
08:37Well, it looks like Andy,
08:39Andy's actually not having
08:40a great month right now.
08:42And what it's comparing Andy to
08:43is not just the company,
08:45but it's comparing Andy to himself.
08:47So Andy is on average
08:4913% down on his deal score,
08:51meaning he's not doing
08:51as well as normal.
08:52He's 10% almost 10% down
08:54his call review score.
08:55Call review is saying
08:56how well they're handling
08:57the transaction,
08:57how well they're handling the call,
08:59are they doing the things
08:59they should do.
09:01Enthusiasm's down,
09:02hesitation's down,
09:03sentiment's down,
09:04persuasion's down.
09:05So this gives you an idea
09:07of go over if you're a sales manager,
09:08hey, Andy,
09:09you're having a bad month right now
09:10or a bad week or a bad day.
09:12Let me go talk to you
09:13because what happens in call centers,
09:15you don't normally see
09:16someone has having a bad week
09:18until the month later
09:20and they don't have the fundings.
09:21It takes time for the outcome.
09:22Now I can actually see right away
09:24what's taking place.
09:26I can also just take a look at
09:27kind of all time.
09:29What are the objections
09:30Andy or my team's having?
09:32So here's all the objections
09:34and here's the individual objections.
09:35This is telling you
09:36what objections they have,
09:37qualification doubt,
09:38not wanting to refinance
09:39their first mortgage,
09:40interest rate concerns
09:42and it tells you
09:42how well they score
09:43on those objections.
09:44So I'm going to go
09:45and pop into a little deeper dive
09:46into some objection handling report here
09:48and just kind of show you
09:49what that looks like.
09:50So this is another
09:51sales organization
09:52I'm looking here
09:53and we're looking at
09:53different objections
09:54they have on the sales floor.
09:56One of these things here
09:57is do yourself debt payoff.
09:58This is someone
09:58that sells consolidation loans
10:00and this is where
10:01their third highest objection
10:03to get on the sales floor
10:04is someone saying,
10:04hey, I can just pay off
10:05my debt myself.
10:07Now I click on this
10:07and I say,
10:08all right,
10:08let me take a look
10:09at my sales floor.
10:09I look at over here.
10:11I look at my scores.
10:11Jacob Kim is the lowest
10:13scored sales agent.
10:14So it looks like
10:14Jacob needs a lot of help.
10:16Now I can do
10:17with a click of a button.
10:17I can actually go to a call.
10:19Let's go to actually
10:20one of the calls
10:21if Jacob's actually
10:21gotten this concern.
10:23And now on the objection report,
10:25I can go right to
10:25where it's at.
10:27This is where the consumer says,
10:28I need to think about this.
10:30Okay, I'm not quite sure
10:31that I want to make
10:32a decision today.
10:33This happened at minute 54.
10:35Now I won't play it for you now,
10:36but you can actually
10:36listen to the consumer
10:37and make their objection.
10:39Think about that.
10:40Being on your sales floor,
10:41being able to go right
10:42to where someone says
10:43they didn't want to buy.
10:44So if you're doing
10:45sales reviews,
10:46sales calls,
10:47if you're doing this manually,
10:48you would have to listen
10:49to an hour long conversation
10:50before you got to a place
10:52where someone said,
10:52I don't want to buy from you.
10:54Now think about the power
10:55of being able to train
10:56your team quickly to say,
10:58here's all the objections
10:59we have on our sales floor.
11:01Here's all the calls
11:02that's taken place
11:02and being able to look
11:03at your agents
11:04and seeing how well
11:05they score
11:05on these objections.
11:07Other parts of Athena,
11:09score is going to be
11:10giving you guys
11:11the ability
11:11to just really manage
11:12in real time
11:13from a sales management standpoint.
11:14So this is the view
11:15of if you're using our system,
11:17but you do,
11:18again,
11:18you do not have to use our system.
11:19So let's take a look
11:19at a couple examples.
11:20These are hot deals.
11:22So while they're using,
11:22a lot of people
11:23in Salesforce
11:23use our scores.
11:25What they do
11:25is they put our deal
11:25possibilities score
11:26in their preview
11:27so that way
11:28they can just look
11:29at all the eights and nines.
11:30So I'm managing this team.
11:31I look at someone,
11:32take a look at Paul Rutherfield deal.
11:35I can click on it.
11:36Here's all this information,
11:37but I'll go ahead
11:38and just pop up a screen
11:40to give you an idea
11:41of what information is in here.
11:43It tells you the score is a nine,
11:44tells you why this person's a nine.
11:46They're looking for a cash out,
11:47refinance,
11:48they have good credit,
11:48they have good equity.
11:50But let's look at
11:50some other things right here.
11:51It gives you a summary
11:52of what was asked for,
11:53what was pitched,
11:54anything that was missed
11:55on the call.
11:56They didn't discuss concrete terms.
11:58They avoided disqualifying
12:00the client prior to taking
12:01the full application.
12:03Action items based off the call,
12:04send the client a link
12:05to the online portal.
12:07Because in the call,
12:07the person said,
12:08I'll send you an online application.
12:10Here's a nice little follow-up email
12:11and follow-up text you can send.
12:12But look at some other information.
12:14Important data mentioned.
12:15Client's home is worth $900,000.
12:17Remaining balance is $400,000.
12:18They're looking for HELOC up to 90%
12:20or a cash out up to 80%.
12:22Client's son needs financial help.
12:25Client's credit score is good.
12:26Current interest rate
12:27they're looking at is 10.5%.
12:28Client wants to close
12:29in the next 30 days.
12:31And some personal details.
12:32Client has a son
12:32who's starting a business.
12:33Client's smearing
12:34some cold weather in New York.
12:35Agent's located in California.
12:36Client's from North East Coast weather.
12:38And is supportive of their family.
12:40So if I'm a sales manager
12:41and now I can quickly look at someone
12:43and say,
12:43hey, this deal didn't turn in.
12:45This is a nine.
12:47This means there's a possibility.
12:48And there's a possibility
12:49because this person has good credit,
12:51has a clear need.
12:52And now I can actually call and say,
12:53hey, it looks like
12:54you're trying to help out your son.
12:55Let me get you that loan that you need.
12:57So Athena can do quite a bit of things.
13:01It can help you coach your agents
13:02in real time,
13:03right, take them through
13:03actual sales calls.
13:05It also can score past calls.
13:07And then it can actually
13:08talk to your customers.
13:10So again, Athena's had over
13:11a million calls that she's reviewed,
13:16over 250,000 hours of talk time.
13:18It's done this at a very high level.
13:20So if you want to find out more,
13:22oh, other thing, Athena's won.
13:24Athena's took first place
13:25of the National Morge News
13:26Digital Showcase Challenge.
13:29So it has an award-winning technology.
13:31And if you want to find out
13:32more about Athena,
13:33you can scan this QR code easily
13:34and be able to reach out
13:36to one of our sales teams.
13:37Josh, thank you so much
13:38for taking us through
13:39how Athena delivers
13:41real-time call scoring,
13:43live coaching,
13:43and some empathy-driven insights
13:46to really help connect
13:48with the people
13:49who are calling in.
13:50It seems like you're turning
13:52everyday conversations
13:53into high-converting opportunities.
13:55Let's jump into a few questions.
13:57Let's go.
13:58How does Athena detect
13:59and score closable deals
14:01from the very first call
14:02with, you mentioned,
14:0489% plus accuracy?
14:07Yeah, I mean,
14:07really what it comes down to
14:08is a very, very large
14:09machine learning model.
14:10So we've been doing this
14:11for over two years.
14:13We reviewed over a million
14:14outcomes of calls.
14:15When we first started this product,
14:16we rolled it out
14:17with Cross-Country Mortgage.
14:18And we took 70,000
14:20of their consumer inquiries,
14:2135,000 that did fund
14:23and 35,000 that did not fund.
14:25And we then trained it
14:26on those outcomes
14:27to figure out
14:28what makes someone buy
14:30and what makes someone not buy.
14:31Because we, again,
14:32we have outcomes.
14:33So if you take a look
14:34at this large data set we have,
14:36we've been able to train
14:37over and over again.
14:38We rolled this out
14:38with over 25 different lenders.
14:40And what we found is
14:41the data set winds up
14:43being across the board.
14:44Everyone thinks
14:44their sales process is different.
14:47But the truth is
14:47the consumer is the consumer.
14:50What they say on the phone,
14:51they say they have
14:52a high interest rate.
14:53They say they,
14:54you know,
14:54one of the examples
14:54of someone was
14:55getting a divorce.
14:57They need to get
14:57their ex-wife off a loan.
14:58Well, that's a high score deal
15:00and they qualify.
15:01That person needs to buy.
15:02So she understands
15:04why people need to buy
15:05if there's a benefit,
15:06if people qualify
15:07and how willing they are
15:08to proceed with a loan.
15:09And in what ways
15:10does Athena help scale
15:11emotional intelligence
15:12and empathy
15:13across your entire sales team?
15:15It's really the feedback.
15:17Being able to actually
15:18coach your people
15:19on things they may miss.
15:21You know,
15:21there was an example
15:22early on,
15:23we had a call
15:24where we had an elderly woman
15:25who was a widow
15:26and her best friend
15:27had just passed away.
15:28And the loan officer
15:30didn't really make
15:31much mention of it.
15:32Asked her if she could
15:33fill out the application
15:34the next day
15:35and she said
15:35she had to go
15:36to their funeral
15:36because her best friend
15:37had just passed away
15:37and I also mentioned
15:38she was a widow.
15:40And one of the coaching tips
15:41I actually gave
15:41to the loan officer
15:42was to connect more
15:44with the borrower's
15:45personal situation,
15:46recent loss of their friend
15:47because the loan officer
15:48basically just said,
15:49okay, well,
15:49can you fill it out
15:50on Wednesday instead?
15:51When this woman
15:52basically said,
15:53I'm a widow.
15:54My best friend,
15:54she mentioned it twice
15:55during the call.
15:56She mentioned that
15:57for a reason.
15:58She wanted empathy.
15:59She wanted connection.
16:00And we as humans
16:00oftentimes just miss that.
16:02And what I can tell you
16:03is what Athena has shown
16:05that empathy and connection
16:06is one of the highest
16:07indicators and drivers
16:08of whether or not
16:08someone's going to buy from you.
16:10So it's going to look
16:10for those opportunities
16:11and actually coach
16:12your salespeople
16:12on how to find
16:13those opportunities.
16:14And let's wrap up
16:16with what real world results
16:18have lenders achieved
16:19by adopting Athena's
16:20AI-powered call intelligence?
16:22So we've done
16:22several different case studies
16:23with our lenders.
16:25One of our lenders,
16:25Agave,
16:26got a 9x return
16:27within the first 90 days
16:28just using our lead score.
16:31They actually took
16:31high score deals,
16:33eights and nines,
16:33where the loan officers
16:34said they didn't qualify
16:35or they no longer
16:36want to work
16:36with these customers.
16:38They put it
16:38in a remarket campaign
16:39and they ended up
16:40getting a half a loan
16:41per loan officer per month
16:43just by remarketing
16:44these deals
16:45that the loan officer
16:46said were not deals
16:47and just decided
16:48to give up on.
16:49If other lenders
16:50be able to get,
16:50one lender's got
16:51a 38% uptick in production
16:53just by being able
16:54to go after the right
16:55lead to the right time.
16:57And we've seen things
16:57where, you know,
16:58if you guys do call reviews,
16:59we're seeing lenders
17:00say they're going from,
17:01normally if you spend
17:0220 minutes a day
17:03in a call review,
17:04it would usually be
17:04one call a day
17:05you could review
17:06in 20 minutes.
17:06Now you're getting
17:0710 calls you can review
17:08because of the objection
17:09hand-on reports
17:09it actually shows you
17:10where to go,
17:12what to look at,
17:12so you're able to
17:14really up-level
17:15your sales team quickly.
17:16Josh, thank you so much
17:17for taking me through
17:18Encelerate's Athena.
17:20It sounds like
17:21really impressive technology
17:22to our audience.
17:23For more information
17:24about Athena,
17:26scan the QR code
17:27or click the link below.
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