Using AI to Gamify Training and Boost Post-Closing QC | Ep 117

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Title Agents Podcast. I am your host, Mo Choumil, CEO of Alltech National Title and ATG Title.

Today I have, uh, my 2 favorite guests, Hope Arabiani and Nadja Rivera. Hope is our Chief Operating Officer. Nadja is our Post-Closing Manager, and this is one of those, uh, AI Corner segments. And the goal is literally take the fear out of AI. And if you're scared of it, you don't know how to use it, I want to give you some real-life examples and scenarios how we're leveraging it and using it.

And, um, we did, uh, last week we did a segment with Hobart Oghiani showing us how to use, uh, AI for onboarding for new employees and new team members and operational dashboards for managers and escrow officers. Uh, today we're going to focus on post-closing. and see how Nadja is leveraging and using AI. And it's really, it's awesome to see how both of you have been so creative, thinking of ways nobody even thought of how to use it. And it's just, it's really amazing how those creative juices kind of flow in and it's awesome to see.

Well, Nadja, welcome to the show. All right. Hi guys. My name's Nadja. I am the post-closing manager here at ATG and Alltech.

I've been here, it's gonna be 10 years in December. I've been in a leadership role for about 5 years now. Um, so I've been kind of figuring out how do I use cloud and AI to kind of help me lead my team. So as most people probably know, post-closing, we're the introverts of the company. We're behind the scenes.

We're the detail people. We're the money people. We're just, you know, ready to work behind the scenes and get everything to the finish line, right? But a big part of leading a team that is so detail-oriented is seeing the metrics, the KPIs, the numbers, and where are our shortfalls, where can we improve, and what caseloads do we need to arrange, right? To handle those higher volumes and, you know, give the best customer service to The realtors, our clients, all of that.

So I'm gonna share my screen. I've created a similar dashboard to what Hope has to help kind of visualize, um, where metrics are from month to month. So this is a demo version, post-closing production tracking. So we have, um, 3 main roles. Uh, we have our post-closers, we have our funders, and then we have a hybrid version, post-closers and funders.

funders. So a lot of our higher volume caseloads may have a separate post-closer and a separate funder so that we can just crank out more transactions. Um, a lot of our other branches across Alltech may have a hybrid role position. What I like to do, and for myself personally, I am very introverted naturally, but also it comes with a sense of like competitiveness, right? Like, I wanna be the best at what I do, and I think a lot of my team does as well.

So this is a collective, um, dashboard that I share with the team, and it points out the metrics by month. Mock, this is a, this are mock names, mock numbers. This is not real. Yes, this is a demo environment. So mock names, mock branches, mock numbers.

Um, so I break out files funded per month and files post-closed per month, and it lists my teams and what their monthly production was. Um, I have a nice little graph, colorful visuals, and then I can go into the details, right? So for a manager, I have target metrics done by time and motion studies with each branch and what their target metric is. How many can that One person post-close, fund, or do both, right? So for my purposes, I have an on target, below target, or if it doesn't apply, right?

But the competitive nature in us all, we can see our colleagues' numbers and go, oh, I wanna beat them, right? So then there comes time where like people go on vacation and then you may be asked to cover somebody, right? I'm gonna be the first person to jump and say, hey, I'll cover those person's files because I want my numbers to show here, right? So I think it's a great tool to use also to let you know individually where are you performing in the grand scale of the entire company, right? So DMV may be a little different than our Wisconsin and Pennsylvania market.

So we do take those into consideration, but It's an opportunity for the team to say, where can I do more? Can I cross-train? Can I learn these other branches and help out if my metrics are showing particularly low, right? And then that way it gives opportunity for everybody to grow. Um, the trend button usually gives a graph, um, when there's more data.

And then every month I can Just enter the numbers here and everything changes and it's really nice and colorful. Similar to Hope, where she has her escrow officer scorecards, I'm able to download this as a CSV file and I can share it with the entire team for all the data, but I can also download an individual report, which is very useful as well. So essentially like the escrow officer scorecard. Um, and that's what I found has really helped me relay, you know, some of these more pain points to my team. Again, us being more introverted, the one-on-one conversations may be more uncomfortable for some people.

Um, so through a visual to say, hey, this is where you're at, this is where I need you to be, or hey, you're overperforming and maybe you can assist You know, in this other branch or area. Uh, so that is the monthly production tracking. Uh, with that, I can look at the different trends of where we need to focus on, where retraining, tips, tricks, all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. So then I thought, how can I get the same type of information to my team that's visual?

It's not a boring email. It's not paragraphs long. It's not, you know, mundane. They're not gonna hit delete. So I thought about doing a Qualia tips and tricks and a check-in with my team.

So I created this post-closing pulse. Um, so this is a template I created with, uh, Claude to help me get some of these refreshers to my team. And maybe teach someone a new topic that they didn't know. Since I oversee Alltech National's branches, a lot of our team is only focused on their region, but we do give the opportunity for cross-training, right? So we want people in Texas to learn about DMV or DMV to learn about Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and that helps with growth all around.

So I may throw in a new state or a new topic that relates to a certain state. So we have topic names, we have a reminder and refresher. It may be a workflow thing. It might be, you know, your title processor had an update and everybody needs to know. It applies across the board.

Common errors and FAQs. How do we fix Fix it, right? What are we seeing a common error across the board? It could be workflow. It could be you know branch related or just a general error that we're seeing that we can fix easily.

And then I have a spotlight and shout out. A lot of us behind the scenes, we do feel underappreciated in post closing a lot of the times. So it's nice to give that shout out. You know for People that go above and beyond or someone that maybe solved a hard problem and got that file to the finish line. Any important deadlines or changes, I'll put like a training here, you know, webinar, lunch and learns, anything like that, or disclosures.

And then I have resources and then I ask them to rate it. Was this useful? Is there a topic that you want me to touch on? And then that gives them the opportunity to say, maybe I need a refresher on this, right? And this way I can deliver to my entire team without singling anybody out.

You know, when you've been in the business so long, you tend to have this I know it all attitude, but things are changing. AI's changing everything in title, right? So how do you get the most updated information or just a refresher to the people that know it all, right? Mm-hmm. So I use this to check in with my team and it's just a fun visual way.

It's very colorful. Uh, and then I thought, what is another way? Hey, Nadja, can I ask you a question? Sure. Uh, what's the feedback?

What's the adoption rate and what's the feedback as far as the surveys and all that? It was kind of, how many people answered it on a kind of just ongoing basis? I'm just curious for the traction. 80% of my team, um, good job. Which isn't bad.

I, I get a lot of, oh, I love this email. You know, first thing that appeals to people, I love the colors. You know, they're gonna read it if they like what they're looking at, right? So I've got a, oh, that's so cool. How'd you do that?

You know, and I said, it's Claude. So I have some of my team that actually go in there and try to do the same type of thing and produce things just cuz they saw me do it. It's really easy. So yeah, I think it's awesome. So on that note, with delivering the same type of information, this particular template, it is a lot to read, different sections, right?

So more people are more interactive visual learners. As a leader, I like to appeal to all types of learners, right? So a little bit of reading, a little bit of interactive colorful playfulness, right? I myself enjoy the playfulness of it. So I said, how do we engage the team that may not want to read?

I was always a creative person. I have a design background. I said, what can I do for people like me? Let's play a game. How fun would that be to play a game at work, right?

So it's in the format of a quiz. Don't be intimidated by that. So these are topics, like I said, they're workflow, they're title topics, and it's a fun way to quiz yourself, but also refresh yourself on very real topics. Compliance, you know, fraud updates and fraud response, things like that. So this is a way to get to the team and not such a, you Very formal, like quiz way, right?

Like I'm not grading you, but it will let you know if you're wrong and you need to refresh yourself. So again, this is just a quiz. You click through it and I've made it so that if you click away, it kind of starts over. No cheating. You can't Google the answer.

Mm-hmm. But it's really fun. How many people should be assigned to the notary file at any given time? It's one, only one person, you know, too many hands in the pot. That's when you make mistakes.

So it gives a nice little, you know, explanation. If you're correct, that's why. So if we're wrong, how long do you think you should confirm whether a closing actually took place? At the end of the month. Hmm.

Oh no, I'm sad. I didn't get that right, but it makes it fun and interactive. And it rewards you when you do get it correct, right? So you don't want that smiley face popping around. So, and this was designed to be a monthly course.

So I have 3 different topics. Each week is a different one. And then the 4th one is a collective quiz on all 3. So it engages the team. It kind of forces them to remember what did we review?

And it's all kind of relevant topics. And again, it's not designed for everybody to get it 100% right. Nobody's perfect, right? So if we're all 100% right, there's a problem. Mm-hmm.

Um, but it's also cross-branches. So like I said, I'm trying to Get my team to push themselves to grow. So you're learning something about a state that you may not work with daily, and I think that's exciting. It should be exciting, right? You should learn something new every day, and that just helps Alltech grow as a whole.

So, um, so that's my quiz. I knew it was a bear one. And I do get 100% on these. Don't worry. And then the last thing I kind of will go over is just kind of how I use Claude as a tool to kind of save time for myself.

Like I said, it's a lot of like topics, compliance, like knowledge that we have here, but how do we get it on paper without spending hours typing it ourselves? And then for me, I kind of have all the information. How do I Consolidate it to a very visual, like clean document, right? So as we all know, in the DMV area, Maryland could be a very big pain point, right? Especially for recording.

So many requirements, water utilities, front foot. Is it a mail-in? Is it Maryland withholding? Is there a town that needs stamps first before it goes to finance and then the clerk? All these kind of things.

Right. So what better way than to ask Claude to consolidate everything I've been putting together for the last 10 years of post-closing on paper, and I didn't spend hours doing. So it gives you, how do you use it? Is this gonna be a simple recording for the county? Is it gonna be— so then there's the universal checklist.

What should everything have before that recording gets out? And then there's a matrix, you know, of all the different counties, all the different stops. How is it gonna be routed? Do they offer e-recording? Right?

Um, so then we have put this in our shared drive where all the team can go and you go to the county and it tells you what's the routing. Is there e-recording? Their address, the phone number, the clerk, what are the recording Are there any special notes? Does it have a lien cert? Is there final water, you know, beforehand and how to contact those departments?

We had a final, we had water guide before, we had a recording guide before, and then we had like a visual graph for lien cert counties. And I told Claude, I uploaded all those documents and said, how do you consume consolidate that because we need to know all those things, right? Um, so this was very useful for something that we've already had in multiple places that you can now go one-stop shop and I didn't have to spend hours doing it. So this is very exciting for me. Mm-hmm.

Wow. That is a, it's a great way to consolidate everything in one place instead of having this fragmented data information and certain different people, uh, first in people's brains or different documents and different drives and different— Right. Yeah. And then, so again, like, um, my team, like they tend to follow my example, right? So then I had a member of my team, she's cross-training for title policies.

So she thought, how do I get everything I know, or what may be on a, uh, a Word document right now into a consolidated handbook? She created a title policy handbook all on her own in Claude. I didn't tell her to do that, but it's something that, you know, when you lead by example, especially with AI, they're not afraid to use it and it only helps everybody. Great job, Nadja. And as I said, uh, it really gets, uh, it's a great way to be creative.

Like now that, um, uh, before it's a big friction. You had all those great ideas. It's very hard to implement, but now with the power and leverage of AI, uh, yeah, any idea, anything, it can become real. Clearly, it's how amazing it is. Absolutely.

And it all started from creating a game. When I first used Claude, I said, I wanna create a game. I don't care what kind of game it is. And so Claude created a taco game for me. So it's my first ever like Claude artifact and I'm so proud of it and it's fun to play.

Yeah. But it's just like anything in your head you tell Claude to do and you can create it. Mm-hmm. A way to gamify this whole extensive Maryland and Pennsylvania recording and all this. You could, and then you'd be an expert.

Yeah. Uh, now, Jana, you, you're very creative. Uh, you're an artist at heart, and what's next for you? Oh, I, I like the idea of creating a game. I do want to get some more interactive, um, Like dashboards that I can get my team to get in Claude and use.

Uh, there's some of my team using it already, but I really want to make things that we touch and do interactive. I think that's the best way to learn, um, especially for detail-oriented people. Sometimes it's not enough to read an email, so I really would like to build like a mock, uh, title processing file to make interactive with like our workflow so that people can practice on it and then they can learn where, you know, they can improve. So. So far across the teams, I know we've, um, we started the journey 3 or 4 months ago, maybe 4 months ago.

The, the whole AI, the Claude implementation, we, we did not, we're not forcing people. We want people to adopt it and use it? Like, you're, you're big champions and ambassadors, and it starts from the top. I mean, people looking at you, using it, they want to use it themselves. Uh, what's the adoption so far?

It's relatively low now, I think, just because of people being hesitant. Um, as far as like quizzes, like people take the deliverables well, but as far as taking the the leap of faith to create. I think that's where people are more hesitant, but I think if I continue showing them what Claude can do, they'll be more inclined to, to take the leap of faith and do it on their own. Anything to add before we, uh, we end this, uh, this episode? Anything to add?

Not much. Just take the leap of faith. Um, anything in your head, tell Claude and it will create it. Even if you start from a pain point or a complaint. You'd be amazed, like, what Claude can offer.

I always tell people the best way to leverage AI to its best is either be creative, you can give us creative ideas and have it help you, or complain, and excuse my language, bitch, to Claude or ChatGPT, complain, complain, complain, then ask a question. Right. Thank you so much. It's been an awesome episode and we'll, we'll be doing, uh, we'll be doing this periodic episodes. AI Corner to share what we're doing in real life.

Thank you, Nadja, and thank you, Hope. And until next time, have a wonderful day. Bye, guys. Bye. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation.

With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey.