00:00We are live from Las Vegas.
00:08I'm Diego Sanchez, president of HousingWire, and I'm joined today by Joe Whalew, CEO of
00:14Total Expert.
00:15Joe, it's so great to have you here today.
00:18Good to be with you, Diego.
00:19Thanks for having me.
00:21So before we dive in, could you just briefly introduce yourself and Total Expert?
00:26Sure.
00:28I started Total Expert, actually, in the basement of a real estate office in 2012, 2013.
00:36And we initially built some tools for loan officers and real estate agents, and that
00:42has evolved now into an enterprise platform.
00:45We do CRM, marketing automation, customer journey automation, intelligence, and a variety
00:50of things to power banks and lenders across the financial journey for home ownership.
00:56And how has the mission of the company evolved since you founded it in 2013?
01:02So there's parts of it that are the same, which is ultimately we came from a perspective
01:08of believing in the power of home ownership and how impactful that was, and we wanted
01:13to build capabilities that helped the mortgage industry connect with consumers, directly
01:21connect with consumers.
01:23And that's just really expanded to today, our mission as a company is deliver the perfect
01:29customer journey for all of the financial milestones, and that is heavily related to
01:37owning a home and being able to use that valuable asset for other important things in life.
01:43So it's really expanded to include that entire customer journey and all of the touch points.
01:49So I've been really impressed over the years with the number of your lender clients that
01:55unsolicited come to me and rave about your platform.
02:00What do you think is the special sauce behind that customer satisfaction that you're driving?
02:05One of our core values is customer obsession, and what that means ultimately is we believe
02:13fundamentally that we have to help our customers win and get the business outcomes that are
02:19important to them, and if we do that, we earn the right to build a company around it.
02:24And it's really as simple as that.
02:27And it's being really intentional about the culture, the organization, and the people
02:31we hire and fire to make sure they fundamentally believe that, and that is really the true
02:37north for us.
02:38And I imagine that bleeds into your sales strategy, like I imagine you're referral-based
02:43in terms of how you approach prospects.
02:45We are, yeah.
02:47And if you think about it, we have a partnership mentality, which so many people that sell
02:52technology to our industry, they want to deliver a solution to you, and then they want to go
02:58on to the next thing.
03:00And we just believe that it's really a long-term partnership.
03:05And our goal as an organization is ultimately to deliver value consistently over long periods
03:11of time.
03:12And as our lenders and banks that we work with evolve, we want to help them continue
03:16to achieve more.
03:18And it's really just that approach.
03:21I think both you and I believe that technology is not going to replace the LO.
03:28It's going to help good LOs get better.
03:31So can you talk about how Total Expert deploys technology to help your LO clients do better,
03:39win market share?
03:40So as of this moment, and historically, a big focus of ours is how do we give superpowers
03:47to loan officers, advisors that are helping customers?
03:52How do we help them identify the moments that matter to their customer?
03:56How do we help them educate, engage, and advise those consumers along the way?
04:03And so we've always really been focused on automating as much as we can to help them
04:08do what they're the best in the world at generally, which is helping customers, giving them high-quality
04:14advice on arguably the most important financial decision.
04:18And so we think about it from that perspective.
04:21As we go into 2025 and continue through 2025, we are taking the technology to an entirely
04:28another level.
04:29We have made some really substantial investments in AI, both if you think about the way we're
04:36investing in AI, there's really two distinctive buckets.
04:40One is predictive intelligence on being able to identify the moments that matter, which
04:46would lead to a need to buy, sell a home, refinance a home.
04:52And then the other bucket is agentic AI, AI agents.
04:58So we are working to bring...
05:00We're in pilot right now, in a very tight pilot group of human-like voice AI agents
05:07that have both voice and text, and the ability to really be a...
05:13Really think of it as a sales assistant to every loan officer that ultimately can do
05:20a lot of the things that they either forget to do, don't have time to do, or let fall
05:25through the cracks follow up, incubate a lead at the very up-funnel stages, set an appointment,
05:32all of those things.
05:33And we're putting that on top of our customer intelligence and our customer journey automation
05:38platform, and we're massively excited about this year.
05:42Yeah, that sounds really interesting and really like a force multiplier for your customers.
05:49We believe it is.
05:51And look, I think it's the changes in AI, we are really in the midst of the most profound
06:00technology shift in human history.
06:02I mean, if you look at what has happened with large language models and gen AI over this
06:08last couple of years, and you watch things moving so quickly, it's a very exciting time
06:14to be in technology and inside industries that are able to transform their businesses
06:19in ways that were just absolutely not possible a year or two years ago.
06:24Yeah.
06:25And it sounds to me like client support, client service is how you have been differentiating
06:31TolaXpert from other CRM platforms for the past 12 years, but maybe AI is another area
06:39where you start to differentiate from some of these other platforms.
06:41We absolutely believe so, and it's taking our true north, which is ultimately being
06:46customer obsessed and delivering value to our customers.
06:51But then it's how do we, like you said, force multiply and compound that value.
06:56And we feel like giving what legitimately feels like superpowers to these high quality
07:03individuals that help homeowners and borrowers everywhere, giving them these capabilities
07:10that are allowing them to do things that were simply not possible before, allowing them
07:15to help customers at a scale that was really never possible, with a lot more precision
07:24and just the ability to reimagine what is possible.
07:30So you're the CEO, you're steering the ship, it sounds like AI is a big priority.
07:36What are some of your other priorities as CEO for this coming year?
07:40So as an organization, we're very much focused on redoing and relaunching a new sales experience,
07:50a refreshed sales experience.
07:53Really the amount of leads and opportunities that we've been able to help our customers
07:57drive has really shown us there's a need for an upgraded sales experience.
08:05So we're investing heavily, we're in the middle of rolling that out in stages this year.
08:09That's a huge priority for us.
08:12We want to deliver the best solution in the market, bar none, hands down.
08:16And we're partnering very closely with our customers to hit those deliverables this year.
08:22And then as an organization, as a company, it's really just really leveling up how we
08:29do things as a business in terms of how we serve our customers, how we unlock value for
08:35them, how we partner with them.
08:36It's just raising the bar is massively important to us.
08:40Yeah.
08:41I'm interested in how you bring in client feedback and how that impacts what you decide
08:49to prioritize.
08:50Yeah.
08:51So that's a great question.
08:53And I would say there's a whole bunch of variety of ways.
08:56And transparently, we've done it wrong many times over the years, and we've learned sort
09:03of what not to do.
09:05And we've, early on, would take one customer's request, and we would end up going really
09:12deep in a particular area, but then neglecting other areas.
09:15And so what we've learned is that you ultimately have to partner closely with your customers
09:20across the board and identify the things that can deliver really substantial value, right?
09:27So we don't want just to make this a little bit better, 1% better here and there.
09:31We want to do some of that.
09:33But ultimately, we want to deliver really substantial incremental value, and we will
09:39prioritize functionality and capabilities based on the amount of value that can be unlocked
09:44for a customer.
09:45As an example, our customer intelligence suite, expanding that and allowing customers the
09:52ability to identify opportunities way up funnel delivers massive value to our customer base.
09:59And so that was easy to prioritize that.
10:02Well, Joe, this has been a really interesting conversation.
10:05It sounds like you have some really exciting priorities for this year.
10:08Thank you so much for joining me today.
10:09Yeah, very grateful to be here, Diego.
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