Technology

Digital Transformation: Laying the Groundwork for Modern Marketing Success Part 3

5 mins read
August 26, 2019
By
Total Expert

Financial services organizations are racing to modernize the customer or member journey to meet evolving consumer expectations. They are also working to give their relationship managers the technology to compete – and succeed – in a new era of marketing.

Implementing the right technology solutions to power digital transformation is a critical decision that will have a lasting impact on your lifetime profits and growth.

Trusting a CRM alone for sales and marketing leaves you vulnerable to critical gaps that can derail customer or member engagement and relationships. A modern Marketing Operating System (MOS) improves business relationships with a focus on one-to-one engagement that not only streamlines the sales and marketing process but also humanizes it, creating customer or member relationships that last a lifetime.

Before you can enhance the customer journey or member experience to create customers or members for life, you must lay the groundwork for modern marketing success across four crucial steps.

Below we detail step three in the process:

Step Three: Build a Business Case

As you move forward in altering your tech stack to better support marketing and sales, the next step is outlining the core reasons new technology is needed in the first place, what the outcome will be once you bring in a new solution and how it will make your organization more profitable.

Put yourself in your executives’ shoes and ask, “What’s in it for them? How will the business perform better because of this new technology solution?” You are essentially asking the leaders of the company to take a risk and trust that you’ve selected the right solution. Building a business case will show you’ve done your research and reinforce the idea that a change is needed.

Driving Revenue from Enhancing Your Customer or Member Experience

We can’t stress enough how important the customer or member journey is. That it be fluid, frictionless and establish your brand as a true industry leader.

Providing metrics around how a new technology solution will strengthen your brand and increase customer or member retention will be hard for your company to ignore. According to Gartner, more than 50 percent of organizations are making investments to elevate their customer experience this year.

It’s time to get ahead of the curve – or get left behind. At Total Expert, we’ve seen significant success with our customers migrating from generic drip campaigns to pre-set Journeys that provide humanized engagement throughout the customer or member experience.

To accomplish this – at scale – you must have a technology solution built to support the needs of consumers and empower relationship managers to provide a seamless customer or member experience on all channels.

Cost Savings with Increased Efficiencies

Everyone needs more hours in their day. Using technology solutions to improve business efficiencies – eliminating manual work to let technology handle tedious, day-to-day tasks – can also improve productivity and, as a result, increase growth.

As Total Expert Chief Customer Officer Sue Woodard says, “Technology won’t replace relationship managers, but the relationship manager who leverages technology will replace the one who isn’t.”

Think of technology as a way to enhance relationships rather than take away that personal touch. When you have the right solution in place, technology empowers relationship managers to spend less time completing mundane tasks and more time out in front of prospects and customers or members.

Financial brands are quickly setting themselves apart with best-in-class tech stacks fit to serve the needs of their customers or members while yielding significant efficiency gains. In today’s digital age, having the right technology solution for your organization is far more than a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have.

Build a Long-Term Foundation for Marketing and Sales

Some people dread change and avoid it at all costs. But the reality is, change is constant. And we all know that.

A report by EY indicated the financial services industry incurred $196.5 billion in mergers and acquisitions in 2018, a 139 percent increase from 2017, and an influx of deals is expected this year.

What better way to position your business for success than arming yourselves with a solution built to grow as consumer needs change and the industry evolves?

Perhaps some people think your current technology is working. There’s no need to adjust. But will it still be working five years from now? 10 years from now? Will it empower relationship managers to truly contribute to the bottom line? It’s imperative you have a technology solution with open architecture, so you can future-proof your business and keep up with the pace of change.

Take a look at potential gaps in your technology stack and identify them before it’s too late. Be proactive in setting up your business for success and invest in a solution that will pass the test of time.

Conclusion

To compete – and succeed – in the new era of marketing, relationship managers need the technology behind them that allows them to modernize the customer or member journey.

Once you’ve built a business case to enhance your tech stack, you can take the next step – aligning with your executive team – to set your organization up for success and be on your way to creating customers or members for life.

Resources

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Expert Partner Network

The Moving Day Advantage: Transform Closing Day into a Loyalty Moment

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Meet the Partner: OneSource Solutions

OneSource Solutions is a utility concierge service that simplifies one of life's most stressful moments: setting up electricity, gas, internet, water, phone, home security, and other essential services after moving. OneSource handles the legwork by identifying providers, comparing options, and coordinating setup so homeowners can enjoy the excitement of their new home instead of stressing over the logistics. With over 1.1 million connections successfully completed, OneSource has built a reputation for taking chaos and turning it into peace of mind.

The moving day problem nobody's solving for

For some lenders, closing day is the end of the journey. But for their customers, it’s the start of a new chapter. There's joy in owning the keys. But there's also stress.

According to research, nearly 80% of Americans rank moving as one of life's top stressors. As if scheduling showings, putting in offers, and finally signing the paperwork wasn’t stressful enough—now borrowers have to figure out utilities, internet options, security systems, and more. And if they’re moving to an unfamiliar area where they don't know the companies and providers, they'll be making dozens of decisions with incomplete information, juggling phone calls and online portals, and trying not to miss setup deadlines.

The average homeowner spends 5–6 hours just coordinating these utilities. That's time spent on friction, confusion, and often overpaying for services they didn't adequately research or compare.

Lenders might walk away with a closed loan and a satisfied borrower, but they miss a critical opportunity that has a short window: Post-loan engagement. This is your chance to turn a single transaction into a lifetime of loyalty.

Why this moment matters for lenders

For years, the mortgage industry has focused heavily on the pre-close experience. That's where the relationship is built, where trust is established, and where communication is constant. But once the papers are signed, that relationship often goes dormant. That's a missed opportunity on multiple levels:

Retention: Borrowers who feel supported through the entire process, not just the financing part, develop deeper loyalty. They're more likely to come back for a refinance, a HELOC, or a new purchase down the road.

Referrals: Borrowers who enjoyed a smooth experience talk about it. When you go above and beyond to help them through the moving process, they’re more likely to become advocates and refer you to friends, family, and colleagues.

Competitive advantage: In a crowded lending market, showing up in the moments that matter sets you apart. It shifts you from being a lender to being a trusted advisor. The borrower's perspective changes from "they financed my home" to "they helped me through a major milestone."

Lifetime value: Today's borrower is tomorrow's repeat customer. A first-time homebuyer who closes with you at age 32 may need a refinance at 41, a HELOC at 48, and a move-up purchase at 53. That's three separate mortgage opportunities where they’ll need professional help—your help if you nailed the post-close experience.

The problem: fragmented solutions, fragmented experiences

Some lenders have tried to solve this by offering hodgepodge perks—a moving company discount here, a home service coupon there. But those aren't solutions. They're band-aids.

Borrowers don't want more options to manage. They want fewer things to think about. They want centralized, reliable, expert guidance on something they don't know much about—and they want it to come from someone they already trust: their lender. That's where OneSource comes in.

What OneSource does

OneSource removes the friction from setting up home utilities by acting as a concierge between the borrower and providers. Instead of the homeowner calling around to figure out which company services their address, comparing plans, and coordinating multiple setup appointments, OneSource does it—all in one place.

The service covers:

  • Identifying all available providers for a specific address (electricity, gas, internet, phone, home security, television, water, trash, etc.)
  • Comparing options and pricing in deregulated markets where choices exist
  • Securing exclusive discounts not available to the general public
  • Coordinating setup and activation so utilities are ready on or before move-in day
  • Saving borrowers 5–6 hours of coordination and often hundreds of dollars in optimized or exclusive pricing

For lenders, the value is even clearer: borrowers save time and money, feel supported, and associate that positive experience with the lender who connected them.

Over 1.1 million homeowners have used OneSource, and adoption rates among lender partners are consistently strong. Because it's not positioned as a "perk"—it's a genuine solution to a real problem that every homeowner faces.

How Total Expert and OneSource work together

Most lenders know they should be staying engaged with borrowers after closing. The challenge is execution: how do you make it seamless, scalable, and actually valuable?

The integration between Total Expert and OneSource answers that question.

Automated outreach at the right moment

Using Total Expert Journeys, lenders trigger a OneSource connection at the perfect time—typically 5–10 days before closing when the borrower is starting to think about logistics but hasn't yet begun the chaotic work of setting up utilities. The borrower receives an invitation to connect with OneSource, all contextualized within their communications with the lender.

One-click access

The borrower doesn't need to sign up for another platform or navigate a new website. They receive a direct link to their pre-populated OneSource profile, so the barriers to entry are near zero. They answer a few questions about their new address and service preferences, and OneSource takes it from there.

Transparent outcomes

As OneSource coordinates utilities and completes activations, lenders can see that engagement happening. When utilities are activated, when issues are resolved, when the borrower has saved money—that data stays visible in the context of borrower relationships, not in a siloed system.

Continuous engagement

The relationship doesn't end at utility setup. By bringing this service into Total Expert Journeys, lenders can sequence follow-up touchpoints that keep them connected as the borrower moves through the post-close window. A check-in on moving day. A referral prompt once utilities are stable. A follow-up six months later when the next major financial decision might be on the horizon.

It's frictionless for the borrower and scalable for the lender.

The lender advantage: from transaction to relationship

For lenders, the integration transforms closing from a transaction endpoint into a relationship milestone. Instead of handing off the borrower at the finish line, lenders stay present through one of the most stressful weeks of the entire home purchase process.

The outcome:

  • Higher engagement: Borrowers see their lender as a partner in their entire home transition, not just the financing part
  • Stronger loyalty: When you help reduce stress at a critical moment, that relationship becomes emotionally charged—the good kind
  • More referrals: Borrowers who had a smooth, end-to-end experience share that story. They refer lenders who "really took care of them"
  • Repeat business: Top-of-mind borrowers come back. For refinances. For HELOCs. For move-up purchases.
  • Competitive differentiation: Most lenders hand off at closing. You don't. That distinction registers with borrowers

The real competitive advantage: showing up when it matters

The lenders winning in today's market aren't the ones with the lowest rates or the most loan products. They're the ones building deeper, longer-lasting relationships with borrowers—and that starts with showing up in the moments that matter most.

Closing day is special. But it's not the end of the story. It's a milestone in a much longer relationship.

OneSource helps you stay present through what comes next. Total Expert helps you scale that presence across your entire organization.

Together, they transform how lenders think about the post-close window—from a time to forget about the borrower and move to the next deal, into an opportunity to build the kind of loyalty that keeps customers for life.

Ready to turn borrowers into lifetime customers?

The Expert Partner Network connects you with solutions designed for every stage of the borrower journey.  

Schedule a demo to see how Total Expert + OneSource can help you stay connected where it matters most.

Lead Management

Your Pipeline Just Got a Promotion

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Smart routing, contact-centric pipeline management, Journey automation, and real-time pipeline visibility have always been the core of Lead Management. But top-performing originators and strategic sales leaders told us they needed more if they were going to stay one step ahead in the current market. They asked; we delivered.  

Here's what's new in Lead Management.

So, an LOS and a sales pipeline walk into a bar...

Until now, keeping lead stages accurate required manual effort. When a loan moved forward in the LOS, someone had to remember to update the record in Total Expert. That gap between what was happening in the LOS and what the pipeline showed was friction nobody needed—and an opportunity to create confusion among lending teams.

Now, those updates are fully automated. When a loan status changes in your connected LOS, the corresponding lead stage advances in Total Expert. No more manual updates, no more room for error, and your pipeline view stays accurate at all times, so your team spends less time syncing data and more time working deals.

Tap into Lead Management from anywhere, on any device

Lead Management is now available in the Total Expert Mobile App!

Originators can view their leads, create new ones, and log notes and outcomes in Total Expert directly from their phone. Whether they're at a real estate agent’s office, a networking event, or just away from their desk, they have full access to the information they need to follow up fast. Speed to lead is critical, and Total Expert is here to help you outpace the competition.

Journeys that don't make you backtrack

As borrowers progress through automated Journey workflows (opening emails, responding to texts, talking to AI Sales Assistants, and completing key actions), your pipeline can advance right along with them. With a few tweaks in Journey Builder, you can update lead stages automatically to reduce manual entry and increase pipeline data accuracy.

Whose lead is it anyway?

One of the most disruptive things a lead routing system can do is reassign a lead that has already engaged with another originator. But if an owned contact re-enters the system with a different number or email, they might get sent back into the distribution queue instead of connected with the last originator they engaged with.

Lead Management significantly reduces that risk. Admins can configure routing policies to bypass distribution entirely when an incoming lead matches a contact already owned by an originator. That way, relationships stay intact, and your team avoids those awkward conversations about who actually owns the opportunity.

Cleaner data, better integrations, more doing what you do best

Lead records now include UTM parameters and additional standard fields, which means better source tracking and more consistent reporting. If you're trying to understand which campaigns, channels, or partners are generating your best leads, this data will give you more to work with.

And for teams using AI Sales Assistant or third-party dialers: lead details like loan purpose, property information, and lead ID can now be included in Outbound Data Connector payloads to give your external tools the context they need to make an impact from the very first touchpoint.

Fully loaded Lead Management

Total Expert Lead Management is built to help turn more opportunities into revenue by assigning leads faster, automating engagements and follow-ups, and giving sales leaders better visibility into what’s working and where the gaps are.  

Ready to see it in action? Schedule a demo or reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more info!

AI

Joe Welu on Agentic AI, Contextual Data, and Earning Customers for Life

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**This content was originally published on Housingwire.com**

In this conversation with HousingWire’s Allison LaForgia, Total Expert Founder & CEO Joe Welu outlined how the company’s evolution to Customer IQ is reshaping the way lenders engage borrowers and drive growth.

"We just announced Customer IQ as this next evolution of our platform,” Welu said. “Taking what we built with Customer Intelligence . . . and we’ve reimagined it for the AI revolution, what we call this 'agentic lending opportunity.'"

At the core of that evolution is a system designed to unify and interpret data in real time. “Customer IQ aggregates all of the different data points and interprets what those data points mean . . . what’s going on in my customer’s life at this moment that I can connect with them on and provide value to them,” he explained.

To bring that concept into focus, Welu pointed to a common borrower scenario: “Maybe they had some medical issues, maybe they had some unnecessary expenses, but it’s clear from what’s happening on their credit report that they have a spiking, revolving debt. Customer IQ knows that you’ve got three, four hundred thousand in equity in your home.

From there, that insight doesn’t sit idle. It becomes actionable through AI-driven engagement. “Customer IQ brings all that together, and then it puts it into our agentic layer, which ultimately is AI agents that can go out and have a conversation, send a text, a voice call, and then bring the loan officer into the loop.

The result is a clear shift from traditional workflows. “If you think about a loan officer historically, they would be going through their database at random… [now] the AI agent will bring them into the loop,” Welu said.

When it comes to measurable impact, Welu didn’t hesitate. “It’s hard to overstate how extraordinary some of the results that we’re seeing are,” he said. “We’ve seen people increase the applications… three to four times more loan applications than if they just use the humans.

That scale is driven by a simple shift in capacity.  “You’re limited on how many of those people you can talk to… now I can go out, talk to thousands and thousands of people… and put time on the calendar for that loan officer.”

In practice, that translates directly into day-to-day execution.“We had a top producer… they had 26 appointments over two days… with people that are ready to talk about how you can help them.

But the opportunity extends beyond volume alone. Welu emphasized a broader strategic shift toward deeper customer relationships. “The most profitable way to grow their organization and build a sustainable lender in 2026 and beyond, is to go really deep with your customers, get loyalty…the limiting factor to doing that was ultimately, day-to-day human behavior,” he said.

AI changes that equation. “If you can just augment their skills… with the most brilliant, intelligent assistant you’ve ever imagined, it’s a recipe that opens up this new world of possibilities.

Central to that “recipe” is context. “It’s that system of context that can aggregate everything… interpret it, prioritize it, and then ultimately feed that into my human loan officers and the AI agents,” Welu said.

That precision leads directly to better outcomes. “ You end up with a customer that feels like you deeply understand them,” he noted.

Compared to prior waves of AI, Welu sees this moment as fundamentally different. “Most of the AI was very incremental… this is helping you go deeper with customers and ultimately create loans and new revenue. The ROI is nearly immediate.

Looking ahead, Total Expert is moving quickly to build on that momentum. “We’ve taken a more extreme and aggressive approach to innovating and moving quickly… it’s just what’s required to win in 2026,” he said.

What’s next includes new capabilities already in development. “We’re releasing… our next AI agent… a refi agent, which helps you go in and analyze your portfolio, create scenarios and just do some really cool things,” Welu shared.For Welu, the mission remains simple: “How do we partner and help our customers win at the very highest level, period, full stop.

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