My Blueprint for Success: How We're Winning with Automation at LMCU

At Lake Michigan Credit Union (LMCU), my job as a Member Experience Analyst is all about improving the experience for our loan officers (LOs) and our members. Our mission is to constantly optimize our processes and improve the experience for everyone involved. For a long time, that meant navigating a frustrating, fragmented landscape of tools and systems. It was a real pain point, especially when it came to training our LOs.

Before we partnered with Total Expert, our digital toolkit was scattered across four different systems. We had one for post-close mailers, another for social media, a third for flyers, and so on. It was inefficient and made it hard for our LOs to find what they needed to do their jobs. 

But that all changed when we made the switch to Total Expert.

We decided to consolidate everything into a single, unified platform. Now, all our content—from print materials and social media posts to email templates and automated journeys—lives in one place. 

We're focused on getting as much as possible into the Total Expert system. The goal was to get our LOs into the platform and keep them there, and it's working. At our last quarterly business review, we learned that 66% of our LOs were logging in at least once a week. This level of adoption is a direct result of our approach: we made Total Expert the required, centralized hub for all of our LOs' marketing and communication needs.

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Driving Adoption Through Personalized Wins

Of course, high-level adoption metrics are only part of the story. To truly get buy-in from our LOs, they need to have their own "win." That's why I've made our training so personalized. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, I offer segmented training sessions. 

Now our LOs can choose to focus on the specific features most relevant to them, whether it's the daily success plan, automated journeys, or Customer Intelligence alerts. This approach helps prevent them from feeling overwhelmed and gives them a clear path to success. We've seen that when an LO has even a small victory—like converting a lead or receiving a positive response from a prospect—it builds momentum and encourages them to explore more of the platform's capabilities. It’s about building confidence, one bite-sized piece at a time.

One of our biggest wins has been in retention and growth. Previously, we didn't have a formal process for following up with pre-qualified applicants. We would just pre-qualify them and hope they would come back. 

With Total Expert, we've created a journey that automatically tracks these applicants and, more importantly, reminds our LOs to touch base with them. I feel there's a huge benefit there for the retention piece, which is key to our overall organizational goal of greatly increasing our membership. 

The automations aren’t meant to replace human connection. Instead, they're able to spark and foster it. I work to help our LOs understand that a Customer Intelligence alert—letting them know a past client has a credit pull or listed their home for sale—is a "conversation piece," not the entire conversation itself. It gives them an authentic, timely reason to reach out and offer value, ultimately helping us meet our overarching goal of increasing membership.

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My "Secret Sauce" for Success

A key part of our success lies in our secret sauce: a commitment to continuous improvement and a direct line of communication with our top performers. I host monthly office hours and lead focus groups with both our retail and member-direct LOs. These groups, which include power users like Matt Adler, provide a vital feedback loop. Matt is a superstar—he's a high producer, yet he makes time to use the technology, and is always at the top for metrics.

These conversations help me bounce ideas off the team. With their input, I'm better able to build features that are practical and impactful.

In fact, it was this kind of feedback that led to our most recent project: a pilot team for Total Expert’s Engage SMS functionality. Matt was consistently asking for SMS capabilities to have a single line of sight across his team's communications, and we're now piloting the feature to improve outreach and engagement.

To keep everyone engaged, I also use BombBomb videos to share updates and training tips. People don’t like to read emails, right? So if I can quickly send out a 60-second video talking about something and screen-sharing to show them where to go, it’s just so much faster and easier.

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A Partnership for the Future

This strategy is paying off. I'm constantly hearing success stories from our LOs. There's the famous story of Steve Kik, who converted a client 12 years after his initial engagement thanks to a Customer Intelligence alert. Or the LO who called on an alert for a credit pull and turned it into a million-dollar construction loan.

Even an LO who was initially resistant to Total Expert recently shared on a team call how much she loves using the platform to send emails and track open rates, proving that they all have to have their own wins.

That sense of partnership extends beyond my internal team. I feel it in our relationship with Total Expert, too. I describe our partnership as fundamentally different from any other vendor relationship. We're never sold something that Total Expert can’t do. It's more like, “How can we make it better? Let's have a conversation about it.” And the Total Expert team is always holding up their end of the deal.

Total Expert doesn't just sell us a product and walk away. They partner with us to ensure our loan officers are successful. This includes listening to our ideas and challenges and collaborating on solutions that will help our team grow and thrive.

This collaborative spirit is what makes the relationship between LMCU and Total Expert so successful. It’s not just about a credit union using a technology platform; it’s about a team of dedicated people using powerful tools and working with a partner to build a better future—one member at a time.