Using Technology to Optimize and Personalize the Customer Journey with CEO Joe Welu

On Nov. 4, 2021, our own Joe Welu appeared on the Mortgage Lending Mastery podcast with host Jen Du Plessis. In this episode, Joe shares what led him to the fintech industry, the problems Total Expert solves, and how we’re helping modern financial institutions personalize the customer experience. 

JEN: I’m delighted to have this opportunity to speak with the CEO and Founder of Total Expert, Joe Welu. Welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have you here.

JOE: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to spend time with you.

JEN: I’m excited about this. A little background about Joe so that everyone knows. Total Expert is a FinTech software leader. They launched the first customer experience platform purpose-built for modern financial institutions and now that we’ve gone through COVID, this becomes even more of a priority. Since 2015, Joe has led Total Expert’s vision. The company powers CRM, marketing and customer engagement for more than 150 companies that range from community banks, credit unions to wholesalers, national banks and mortgage lenders. Again, I’m delighted to have you here on the show.

What’s going to happen is we’re going to run across each other more frequently at different events because now, we have the reticular activator opened. Something that you work on at Total Expert is making sure that the reticular activator is always lit, ignited, running for clients so that they remember their loan officer partners. We’re going to talk about that but before I do, I want to talk about you. What got you into the mortgage space? Were you a lender before you came into Total Expert? Did you see a need or did you come right from FinTech?

JOE: No, I had zero FinTech or technology background. I came here, which is a story in itself. I was a real estate agent. I had a real estate team with RE/MAX and started incubating the company out of the basement of a real estate office. The initial reason we started it is that we looked at the customer as doing a single transaction. They didn’t look at the loan officer and the real estate agent.

They only wanted to buy a home. The initial thought process around that was we wanted to be able to market alongside loan officers to go out into the market and win customers and keep those customers long-term. That was the original reason that we started the business initially. It very much evolved from there.

Check out the full episode on kineticsparkconsulting.com.