AI has surged from curious novelty to critical business driver faster than any other technology in the digital age. With AI capabilities evolving faster than most financial institutions (FIs) and marketing teams can train for, it’s easy to understand how leveraging AI tools and enterprise solutions effectively can become a frustrating experience for both leadership and marketing pros.

While every organization’s challenges are unique, one common thread is that most FIs lack a clearly defined strategy or framework for selecting, implementing, and using their AI solutions.

Here are three foundational elements to help marketing leaders accelerate AI-enabled customer engagement without losing control of authentic, on-brand customer experiences.

Focus on using AI to scale—not replace—your team

The AI revolution arrives with ironic timing for FIs: We’ve spent the last decade talking about how to bring back the human touch in a digital-first world. On the surface, it’s easy to think that AI will push us in the opposite direction—breeding more generic, cold, impersonal experiences.

But like other tech tools, the most immediate and significant value will come in using AI as a tool to scale your team’s capabilities. What does that look like in practice?

• Automating or offloading the tedious and repetitive work your team does: Think about AI agents cold-calling for lead gen, doing time-consuming data analysis, or handling the orchestration of complicated, multi-touch, multi-channel, anything-but-linear customer journeys.

• Unlocking deeper insights, faster: AI can dive into your customer data to find new kinds of intent signals in real time. Imagine identifying those key periods of transition or change in peoples’ lives—graduating, getting married, starting a family, changing careers, retiring—so your team can show up for customers at these critical moments.

• Freeing up more time for human connections: At the simplest level, AI applied well will allow your team to do more with less—and that will give them more time to focus on where and how to provide that human touch and make those genuine one-to-one engagements. This is what we’ve been doing at Total Expert for more than a decade now through better analytics and smarter automation. AI just turbocharges everything.

Choose the right AI—and connect it to your core systems

Not even three years after ChatGPT opened this AI era, there are thousands of AI tools on the market—including hundreds of marketing-specific AI solutions. Don’t be fooled by the “they’re all the same under the hood” line—the packaging is critical to the usability and time-to-value with these tools, especially when it comes to delivering authentic experiences.

It’s really a classic Goldilocks problem: On one side of the spectrum, the big-name generalist AI platforms that claim to do everything produce generic experiences for your customers. They’re not built for the highly regulated, highly sensitive kinds of engagement and conversations that FIs have with their customers. Plus, it takes a lot of work—and time and money—to get them to work like you need them to.

On the other side of the spectrum are hyper-specialized AI apps built to do one very specific task right out of the box—but lacking the broader capabilities to connect with your core systems and orchestrate entire experiences. This kind of extremely focused functionality ends up creating maddening experiences for customers when they hit the limitations of the tools’ knowledge and capabilities. FIs need AI tools built with enterprise-grade, enterprise-wide capabilities—able to tie into your marketing system of record so they can see and orchestrate the full customer journey.

If you can solve that Goldilocks problem — finding an AI solution built for financial services and connecting it at the core of your CX — you can realize the full efficiencies and, more importantly, deliver a more genuine, helpful, brand-authentic experience.

Give your AI the inputs that set it up for success

Using GenAI to create content — copy, design, video, etc. — really can feel like magic. But the reality is that it’s inherently derivative. In other words, the outputs are only as good as the inputs — like the classic analytics adage: garbage in, garbage out.

If you want to maintain brand authenticity, create reliably compliant outputs, and deliver consistent experiences that feel seamless for your customers, you need to help the AI fully understands your brand, your engagement strategy, and your acute and big-picture objectives.

Best practices for prompt engineering is an article—or an entire book—in itself. But the point is, as incredible as AI is, it’s still a tool — and a tool requires a skilled, intentional user. Cultivating these skills also takes intention. Workers in any role can feel naturally hesitant to be open about their AI use and experimentation; they don’t want to risk looking lazy or replaceable. But to move forward effectively with AI, FIs need to build a culture that encourages that experimentation and sharing of new use cases and best practices.

AI as an engine for authenticity

There’s little doubt that AI will lead to a surge in impersonal, generic banking experiences. That’s not a condemnation of AI; it will be the result of FIs using generic AI tools and generic AI strategies.

That also means that genuine, personalized experiences will become even more differentiated in this incredibly competitive industry. The key is to focus on how to use AI to amplify what we’ve always strived to do in this industry: make real connections and build authentic relationships based on trust.

By focusing on these three principles — using AI to help your team focus on scaling human connections, choosing the right tool and integrating it deeply, and giving your AI the best possible inputs — you’re building a strategy that makes AI an engine for authenticity. The reward isn't just increased efficiency; it's the ability to deliver authentic, brand-consistent experiences at a scale never before possible.

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The mortgage industry is in the midst of a historic transformation—and artificial intelligence is leading the way. Our Founder & CEO, Joe Welu, joined David Lykken for an episode of the Lykken on Lending podcast to discuss how Total Expert’s AI solutions will reshape the customer journey for lenders.

From incubating leads and mining databases to nurturing post-close relationships, Joe shares how voice AI is giving loan officers “superpowers” that help scale productivity, improve retention, and focus on delivering the high-value advice consumers need most. With compliance guardrails built in and multiple AI agents on the horizon, this episode offers an inside look at the future of mortgage lending and why early adopters of AI will hold a major competitive edge.

Joe also explains why the human element remains central to homeownership, and how AI is designed not to replace loan officers, but to free them up for more meaningful conversations that strengthen customer trust and drive long-term loyalty.

Catch the conversation to hear how AI is revolutionizing lending and why Joe believes those who embrace it will be tomorrow’s market leaders.

Total Expert Founder & CEO Joe Welu recently joined Robbie Chrisman for an episode of the Daily Mortgage News podcast where they discussed the current (and future) state of the mortgage industry, challenges facing lenders and loan officers, and the solutions that AI-enabled tools can provide in difficult markets.

Agentic AI is reshaping loan officer productivity and customer engagement. With Total Expert’s new AI Sales Assistant, lenders can automate lead incubation and qualification—achieving human-like conversion rates in weeks, not months. Joe also highlights the power of voice AI to revive aged leads, trigger refinance opportunities, and prevent deals from falling through the cracks, all without the need for massive call centers and without removing loan officers’ ability to build authentic human connections with borrowers and homeowners.

That’s because AI-enabled tools are designed to reduce the administrative and repetitive tasks that take you away from what you do best: advising customers and guiding them toward the best possible financial outcomes. Joe also shares insights on selecting AI partners wisely, managing data responsibly, and capitalizing on both front- and back-office efficiencies. As the AI arms race heats up, Total Expert aims to empower originators—not replace them.

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Joe and Robbie's discussion begins at the 4:55 mark.