Live chat in Broker Portal

Live chat is a real-time, two-way communication channel, available through our Broker Portal. It allows you and your registered support staff to connect with us digitally and get assistance on a wide range of queries relating to your new and existing clients’ applications and home loans, respectively.

To maximise the benefits of Broker Portal and live chat for your office, you can give your support staff access to the Broker Portal.

Live chat is a digital tool that you can now access in Broker Portal. We can answer your queries related to:

• Inflight applications
• Construction loan progress payments
• Existing client queries

Before starting a chat, you can self-service many queries through our digital resources, including:

• Broker Portal for application status updates, existing client loan information and variable rate review requests.
• Broker Help Centre for common queries related to preparing an application and managing existing clients.

Your existing clients can also use live chat in Macquarie Online banking for many of their general and home loan needs.

Our Personal Help Centre article has more information for them on how to use live chat. Here are some examples of when they should use live chat:

• creating new or merging home loan accounts,
• closing a home loan account,
• linking offset accounts to a different home loan account, or
• requesting documents for a closed home loan.

Live chat is available Monday to Friday (excluding public and bank holidays), from 8:45am to 7:15pm (Sydney time) when started in Broker Portal. During this time, the live chat button is displayed in the bottom right-hand corner and you can click on this button to start a conversation.

Note: Live chats enquiries related to existing clients, will only be available from 9am to 5pm.

To get the most out of live chat and to avoid delays:

• Check the Broker Portal prior to starting a chat. Our Broker Portal has information on all your applications and existing clients including status updates and loan information.
• Have your APP ID, relevant documentation and questions ready before you initiate the chat to ensure a seamless experience. Please note our team member can view the transcript of your previous chats if your message relates to an earlier enquiry.
• For support staff, please ensure you’ve been set up with access to the Broker Portal, for the broker(s) you’ll be requesting information on behalf of. If your Macquarie ID has been linked correctly across multiple brokers in the same office, we’ll be able to chat about the applications and home loans related to those brokers. If the brokers aren’t in the same firm, you’ll need to log in with your Macquarie ID that’s linked to the broker who is associated with the application or home loan your enquiring about via live chat.
• Please avoid general questions, if your enquiry relates to a specific application please provide as much information as possible, including the application number, to ensure our team member can provide accurate and complete information.
• If you prefer to dictate your message using speech-to-text technology, Microsoft 365 and Apple dictation services can help you draft live chat messages.
  

To start a live chat:

1. Log in to Broker Portal
2. Click on the live chat button in the bottom right-hand corner
3. Select the type of query from the pre-chat form
4. Once you’re connected to a team member, type your message in the space provided
5. Select the Enter or Return key to send your message.

For security reasons, please don’t share any sensitive information, such as your password, on live chat.

When you initiate a chat, you’ll be notified of your position in the queue. You’ll either be next in queue, or in a specific position in the queue.

Your live chat session will automatically start once our team member accepts your live chat request.

If you choose to leave the queue, we’ll ask you to confirm before we close your chat request.

Either you or our team member you’re chatting with can end the live chat.

To end an active chat session:

• Select the X icon. We’ll ask you to confirm if you want to end the chat.
• You can then select End chat to end the live chat, or No, return to chat to return to the chat.

The chat can also be ended while you’re waiting in the queue. If you ended the live chat in error, we’ll give you the option to return to the active chat before ending it.

If our team member ends the live chat, you’ll be notified of this in Broker Portal. You can then click on Close chat to minimise the tab.

You can minimise the live chat button when you’re not chatting with us by clicking on the X. To expand it again, click on the chat icon.

You can minimise the live chat window during a live chat so it doesn’t interfere with any content you’re viewing on the Broker Portal while you wait for a response from the consultant.

If the live chat window is minimised, the button will display the name of our team member you’re chatting with. The button will change colour and a new message count will appear when you receive a new message. You’ll then need to expand the chat window to view the new message. 

Click the – (dash) on the live chat window to minimise the window, and the live chat button to expand it again.

If you or our team member you’re chatting with haven’t exchanged messages for between 5 to 10 minutes the chat will time out. We’ll provide time updates to let you know if your chat will end shortly.

Once timed out, you’ll be notified in Broker Portal and then have 60 seconds to send a message and continue to chat with our team member. If you don’t send a message in this time, the live chat will automatically end to allow our team to assist others.

If your chat does time out, you’ll see a confirmation page confirming the chat has ended.