Human-Centered Automation: How AI Enhances Title Relationships | Ep 42

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 back to the Title Agents Podcast. I am your host, Mo Choumil.

CEO of Alltech National Title. And today I have a pleasure to be joined by Hoyt Mann, co-founder of Alana.ai, a company that's changing the way title professionals work through smart automation and AI. Hoyt's got deep roots in the industry and a big vision for how technology can elevate the client experience, streamline communication, and help agencies grow. If you've been curious about how AI fits in the future of title, this episode It's for you. Welcome, Hoyt.

Hey, Mo. Thank you for having me. Yes, doing very well. Yes. Well, we always start the show with give us your story, your background, how you get into the AI title in this industry.

Man, you know, I'm a technology nerd, you know, proud and true. I started in the technology industry about 3 decades ago. So, I've been through technology, you know, these technology revolutions. Now, this is probably about the third one that I'm working through now. And it's, and, you know, again, lifelong technology nerd.

And getting in the title industry was by accident, by need. And I think that's where most people find themselves, which is you're either tricked into title or you're born into title. Yeah. And I was tricked. I was tricked into title and got lucky to work with Randall Nelson, the founder of RamQuest, back in the day.

And I started as a coder at RamQuest backing up Randall. There was only one coder when I joined. That was Randall. And then I was the second guy. So software developer by trade.

And here we are. So what inspired you to launch Alana.ai, and what problem were you seeing in the industry that you knew needed solving? Yeah, you know, when we were at RamQuest, communication was a huge issue. So I launched Paperless Closer, which is a RamQuest product, back in 2000, in the early 2000s. And so launching that was this very revolutionary, revolutionary way to communicate with RamQuest, or for RamQuest customers to communicate with their their partners and anybody outside the title company.

So we were solving this problem using the web portal. Again, in 2000, web portals were not a thing. And so we were able to win an award at RamQuest. And again, Randall was authoring, you know, architecting a lot of these type of solutions. And so it was really great to see how web portal could actually impact the communication cycle that was happening in the title closings.

And again, that was in the 2000s, early 2000s. So yeah, it's great to see how everything has evolved, but also how things have not really changed. So the technology around title has been evolving, and we all know title adopts technology at a slower pace than other industries. The whole industry, the mortgage industry drives it, if I'm not mistaken. I think so too.

And, you know, but the thing I see is that even with the mortgage industry and the way they adopt technology, when it comes to these, these different industries talking between each other, there is a huge gap in— once, once it comes to a certain point in the process, I think these companies just— this is not my problem. And therefore they don't put technology to solve these issues that currently exist. And so it's left to the title industry to come up with these technologies and handle some of the shortcomings that might exist in those interactions. This podcast is brought to you by— Struggling to set appointments and generate leads? What if you had a team working behind the scenes to help you book more meetings and close more deals?

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Ready to take your career to the next level? Visit alltechnationaltitle.com or DM us today to start the conversation. You, you've been in this industry for a long time. How has your perspective on title, title business evolved over the years? Yeah.

You know, coming back to solving a problem of communication, and that's really where a lot of its roots started in 2000. And I was thinking about 2019 is when we kicked the company off. But the evolution of title companies is everybody's on a different curve when it comes to adopting technology. So as we were coming out with this concept of an AI chatbot, You know, an AI-powered chat. Before AI.

Especially via text message. Yes. Well, before ChatGPT, it was this automation of conversations via text messaging. And it was, it was so new that there was a few people that would jump on it. But a lot of people, they go back to where they, where they're comfortable, which is most, most title companies have these comfortable relationships built.

And their whole company is built on those relationships. And Mo, you know all about this, right? Is, is that strong relationships drive business. And yeah, and most people are like, I don't want technology in my relationship. You know, it's a human relationship that we have, not a technology.

And I don't want to have a relationship with an AI bot. Most people don't. They want, they want to talk to Mo when they call up. Like, I know this guy is going to take care of me and, and I love that relationship. And it's, it's slowly convincing the title industry that technology is not here to replace the relationships.

Technology is here to enhance the relationships. Amen. So yeah, if you, if you talk to any accountant that was going from basically a paper-based accounting system back in like you know, the '80s or, you know, coming into the '90s and tell them that spreadsheets were going to be how they do business, they would look at you cross-eyed. They're like, no, you know, I have my ledger books, you know, I have, I have all the paper processes that I use. Now everybody would just be like, that's silly to even think about doing anything by hand or via paper.

So yeah. So the mistake— I think the mistake a lot of people make in our industry is they As you said, they're afraid of losing that relationship touch, but all you're doing is enhancing it. Like, you're having a human touch, but you can add 2 or 3 automated touches. Actually, the consumer, the customer, the client is going to actually appreciate that. They think you're talking to them that many times, only this one's automated.

You're just making it better. Exactly. And the part that I'm coming to understand, and again, there's a heavy psychology component to what we all do, but it's separating out the idea. The idea, the difference between connection and transferring of information. You know, the connection that we have between humans is I pick up the phone or we jump on this call today.

We, we're communicating, we're connecting. I'm not just transferring you information, but if I send you a text message or a LinkedIn message, there's no emotion. There's no feeling, there's no warmth. It's just words, you know? And the same thing in all of our emails and all of our— we try to use emojis to communicate emotion, but the truth is there's nothing that beats what we're doing here.

And in technology, it's about transferring of information, even if it's messaging or communications, it's just transferring that information. This still needs to happen. The human component is so critically important. And I think that people blended the two together and we've come so fast, so quick that they think text messaging can replace a phone call. It can't.

But there's two components that a phone call has, which is data and the emotion. So the phone call still needs to happen, but the text message can make the phone call a little bit more enjoyable. So. This podcast is made possible by our sponsor. You have worked so hard to build your business.

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Visit alltechnationaltitle.com or DM us to start the conversation. Alltech National Title, smart transitions built to last. So, um, what have been the biggest challenges and wins getting companies to adopt AI tools like Elan? Yeah, you know, it's changing the mindset, changing the thought process. And it's really at this point, it's been a lot of fighting fear.

You know, people are fearful of change just in general. I don't care what it is, you know, changing in the way, you know, construction happens and you have to change your way that you drive. I mean, everybody, it creates stress, creates anxiety. And yeah, it's managing that stress, managing that change is what I see a lot of people working through. And some people are, you know, take that change head on and other people again are fearful of that technology.

And so there's a long laundry list of reasons why people fear the change. Am I going to lose my job? You know, is my value going to be less important? All these things. And the opposite is normally the case.

It's going to enhance what you do. You know, it's going to help you to do things better and faster. And, and And again, with more quality, I think that's where we have to look at it. It's not, can I do more? But it's a quality of effort that I'm putting.

You know, do I have time for a conversation with friends versus I'm so slammed I can't, you know? Can you share a story or an example of a title company that saw a major transformation after implementing Alana? Yeah, yeah. We have a customer up in Oklahoma, and you think about Oklahoma as not a tech-forward state, you know? know, in the US.

And I was very, you know, I was very also reserved to think, okay, you know, will this title company in Oklahoma be successful? And they were hugely successful because, again, the separation of the transferring of data versus relationship building is so critically important. So this title company has done things like, you know, they have buyer, buyer, buyer cost estimates and seller net sheets that they can deliver via Lana. And therefore, that means that the realtor is standing in the house and can get those estimates via text message and so and be able to hand those to their buyer or seller right there on the spot. And so these are powerful tools that happen 24/7 that otherwise, you know, that it would be a phone call or it'd be an email and there would be delay and it would, it would reduce the level of service.

Now, That information, you don't have to have a lot of touchpoint there. You know, that realtor just needs it, needs it now. There's no niceties about it. It's just, I need this information. And so, so that they're doing almost 1,000 of those, those requests a month.

And so that means that's 1,000 emails or 1,000 phone calls that they're not getting. Those are all happening through— Efficiency. Yeah. Very much. And so, so that has been successful.

The other operation success component is their new order entry, is that they took a team down from 4 people doing all they were doing all day, every day, new order entry. And now they've, they, they've trimmed that team down to 2 and have repurposed the other 2 to do other functions within the company. And so— Elevate that value. That's right. And the other side is, is that, you know, in our industry there's churn, right?

There's people that come in, the people that go out, especially in a data entry role. What this gives title companies is ability to not have to go to find somebody to fill that role. Well, it's like, wait, technology is filling that role. And now, you know, the natural, natural ebb and flow doesn't necessarily, you know, impact the operations as much as it once did. What's the next big frontier in title that you think agencies should be prepared for?

I think, personally, I think AI is going to play a bigger and bigger role. But would you, would you, what's your, what are your thoughts? Yeah, you know, there's these, you know, everybody has their own technology stack, right? They got their production system and they got, you know, these different ways to do things. I think one of the big challenges is to analyze What, how you do business and to be open to changing the way you do business and, and being truthful about that.

So that, so truly there's a gradual change that's happening. And the change is analyzing, you know, if this is the way we've always done it, then challenging what that really means. You know, does that mean that there's a better way? Can there be a better way to do that or not? And I think that when, when I walk into a title company and I watch and I say, just show me what you do.

Just work as you would if I wasn't even here. And I see these pro— I see things happening. I'm like, well, why do you do that? Oh, that's the way we do it. This is, this is what we do.

And I'm like, wait, so let me get this right. You print out all these documents and then you pull these documents out and then you put in other sheets between these documents and then you go back to the scanner and you scan all these documents in. And then you take the documents out of the feeder and you pull out all these sheets and you throw all that paper away. And, you know, and now you have one big PDF, you know, and I'm just like, I'm like, wait, wait, you know why? It's like, oh, well, that's how we do this, that, and the other.

And I'm like, yeah, technology can help in the smallest of ways that will have a huge impact on, you know, consumables, just operation cost. It's like, you know, why do you need so much paper in your, in your office? Well, you know, these are all the things we print out. We print this stuff out, we pass it. It's like, wait, what are you doing?

And but people don't— people are comfortable doing the thing they did for the past decade or 2. And it's until you take a, take a minute and stop and go, is there a better way? And can I, can I take technology and solve it? So, Mo, to answer your question directly, you know, there's The new technology is here. It's how do you apply the new technology?

Exactly that. Ship has sailed. You can jump on or you can drift behind. I remember like 14, 15 years ago when we went paperless and, you know, that big resistance and the best way that I kind of fought it and combated it was that literally no more ordinary file folders. So we kept recycling the file folders.

Eventually they wore off. Then we had no way but legal papers because you have nowhere to put them. Yeah. For any change, there has to be a meaningful disruption in your current behavior. And like you said, when there's no file folders, yeah, here you go.

Nowhere to put the papers. So let's dig into automation. What are some everyday tasks title agents are still doing manually that could easily be automated today? Yeah. So, you know, where Alana started was communications.

And so there's other solutions in the marketplace where, you know, as your workflow is executed, you're sending out communications via text and email. And that's, and that's great. But there's more to it than that. You know, the concept of having, having an intelligent assistant be able to respond to questions. And that's been our, our claim to fame, you know, since 2019.

How does that work? What happens when somebody has a question? Yeah, yeah. And so as in a text messaging conversation, so a realtor or even a buyer or seller, you know, has a question of where's my closing and, or I need my 1099. We're in tax season, right?

I need a copy of my 1099. You know, there's title companies that have done thousands, tens of thousands of orders through 2024. And now they're, you know, there's these questions. And for Alanda to be able to go, yeah, here it is. So it automatically pulls it.

The bot automatically pulls the documents from the file. That's amazing. That's right. Yeah. And that reduces a phone call, reduces the email.

And that one powerful use case is something that title agents are able to leverage today. Because here's, here's the thing, Mo, you and I know the power of technology, right? We know that AI is doing amazing things, but there's a limit. There's a limit, and the limit is really access and context. So ChatGPT can't do anything with your title production system data unless, you know, unless you're feeding it into it, which is not recommended.

Yeah, I'm going to qualify that. Public. Yeah, that would be open. Yeah, maybe open to the public, which is not good. It would be open to the public.

Yes. Nobody, nobody should do that. But that's, that's really the limitation. So when we look at the use cases for AI, we see all the power in sales and marketing, but operations really falls flat. And so, so yeah, that's, that's a, that's a big limiting factor.

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Safi Virtual— expert support tailored What has been your approach to leading innovation in the industry that's traditionally paper-heavy and process-driven, or killer process-driven with so many processes? Yeah, you know, it's really, to me, fear is just, you know, is basically you take the teeth out of fear when you address it with education. When people are more educated and they really understand what the problem with the, Either the risks are or, you know, the different scenarios there. You know, to me, that, that is, that's the point of, of a good solution is educating to reduce that fear and to open it, open it up to exploring and to be curious about how can this, how can this solve some of the issues that we have. So it's a, it's a big deal to let your guard down.

And be open to a new way to do things. So what excites you most about where the industry is heading over the next 5 years? Yeah, you know, I think that, I think the data analytics makes me the most excited. There's, you know, it's funny, this concept of you don't know what you don't know, you know, but The reason is, is that we haven't had space to understand some of that, that upper end of knowledge, or it might be limited or siloed data. There might be a number of reasons why.

But when we can unlock some of that, that power of the data that you have and create actionable, you know, steps for that, for that data that you have and look at it in a different way, I think it's going to be huge. It's going to be very powerful for title companies and title owners. So I think that is the next step. And it's one that's gated right now. People aren't even thinking about— I mean, if you were to— you're like, how do you run your business?

And you're like, oh, I pull this spreadsheet and this spreadsheet, this spreadsheet, I mix them all together. I try to create some trend analysis. And next thing you know, you're doing these advanced spreadsheet you know, formulas and coming up with this, this special— and again, you're spending hours, hours and hours to do this. And that's on a monthly basis. It's like harnessing the power of, you know, AI to do some of that work to me is the next frontier.

Because once you unlock, unlock these answers, you're like, oh, this is telling me something new, something I need to do. Well, it's one thing we discussed in our strategy meeting for the year. Like, how do we kind of like data analytics? It's— I haven't touched on it yet. Hopefully it's my goal for second quarter.

It's literally how do you— the exact same thing. How can we kind of learn and hopefully make some kind of educated guesses and predict prediction like in the short term, long term? And how can you kind of leverage that to actually help our clients, our customers, and our team? And I just, I truly believe that we haven't touched the surface yet. So I'm getting excited to start digging deeper into it, and I'll share ideas once I start working on it.

Yeah, yeah. So we're a product company, and so our concept is how do we create products and bring those to the title industry to help them, to help the title industry do their business in a better, more efficient manner? But once you create, you can only create so much efficiency, right, Mo? You know, you can only you can only squeeze so much so much out of this out of this lemon, and and at the end of the end of it, you know there there's nothing left to squeeze. And so in my mind, there's no process left to automate at some point.

And you guys might even be at that point where full automation, you know full paperless, you know and and you're like okay where do we go from here? And that's where I think is the exciting space that that AI can. can help out with is exactly what you're talking about, you know, being able to create those analytics and do the future casting and predictive analysis. So for the title pros listening who are still on the fence about AI, what's one misconception you'd love to clear up? Yeah, yeah.

I think the misconception of that AI is going to take your job. I think that to me, if there's one message I want everybody to know is that AI will not take your job. You know, I believe in this concept of human in the loop. So again, just spreadsheets did not take anybody's jobs. You know, we still have them today.

They've been around for 30 years or plus. Yeah. And, and I'm sure there was accountants worried that spreadsheets were going to take their job. And so I would say, Yeah. I say that you're not going to lose your job to AI, but you will lose your job to somebody using AI.

I hear a lot of people say that, and that makes a lot of sense, especially in, like I said, sales and marketing roles, that in content creation— Our content, oh, it's incredible. It just creates so much, it took so much friction out of it. It did. It did. What I've found is that If you leverage, if you lean into AI and you say 15 minutes a day, I'm going to learn something new, whether it's through AI or about a different solution.

And you do that for a month, 15 minutes a day for a month, you are going to be so much, so much further along than you were before you started. Yeah. It's a, it's a personal thing that I do is that the great part about AI is that you ask a question, it not only gives you an answer, But it asks follow-up questions and you can drill into a topic a little deeper. And so as, you know, as I'm looking at different things, you know, I'm learning more and more. I've learned more, I feel like, in the last year or so using AI, just general topics than I have, you know, in the past 10 years for the sake that it really encourages a broader understanding of the topics that you're talking about.

And to me, that's, that's what we got to keep doing as humans is you got to know more, you know. Today's episode is sponsored by— hey, you title agents, stop wasting time digging for answers or waiting on an email or callback from your underwriter. With TitleGPT.ai, you get instant, reliable answers to your title questions fast. No more delays. Work smarter, Close faster, and keep deals moving.

Try www.titlegpt.ai today. I don't know if you, uh, if you heard, but Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and chairman of the board, he's like, lately he's, uh, he publicly claimed he's going to spend 80 to 90% of his time on AI, like, from here on. That tells you that, like, one of the most brilliant business, uh, minds of this century, last decades or 100 years, an incredible human being, an incredible entrepreneur who's saying he's been spending 80-90% of his time on AI. So it tells you everything. Well, you know, I, so here's the fearful, the fear not only exists in our business, but the fear is, is really across generations.

And so I have a daughter in college. She's a, she's a senior, senior in college. She's working on her thesis and looking, looking toward graduate school. And in her process, I talk about her a lot, but in her process, I, I talk about it. I encourage her, how can you use AI to help you?

How can you use AI to, to fast, to, to not do your work for you, but to make more efficient use of your time while you're working? So— Copilot, like co-thinker. Exactly, exactly. That cop-out. And that's what, you know, so she was— she's fearful that, hey, look, I don't— I can't have my thesis being written by AI.

I want it to be mine. I want to come up with the thought process. I don't want to be influenced by AI in her, in her process. And I respect that. I want the rich, you know, that original thinking, especially in college, is, is super important.

She has to go through all those processes. But what I encourage you, I'm like, find areas to where AI can help you, whether it be searching for articles that you need to read or, you know, doing, you know, doing something for you. And she did. She, she raised the same issue that actually exists in the title industry, which is there's research that's gated, that's— there's databases that she has to look through to find articles that are not accessible by outside, you know, outside AI sources. So now, so that's the same situation that we just talked about, you know, a TPS.

If you, if your TPS doesn't have, you know, there's no way for AI to look at it, then, you know, AI can't understand your business and can't give you data, you know, about your business. And so— Are you working with all title production softwares? Are we still like, no, no Qualia, I guess? Yeah, unfortunately not Qualia. They, you know, I think they have, they have their own vision about what AI means in their world.

They don't play nice. Right. You know, but we're Qualia partners. So we actually, we integrate with ResWare, we integrate with RamQuest, and we integrate with SoftPro and Settler as well. So those 4 title production systems are ones that we have deep integrations with.

And yeah, and it's our current— currently our integration partners. Well, I should say integration platforms. Yeah, we're partnered with Qualia. So how do you keep your team aligned with both innovation and the needs of the industry? Yeah.

So my co-founder, Randall Nelson, Randall handles really the architecture of the application. He handles All the software, you know, basically he's the product manager as well as, you know, as well as the, the leader of all the technical aspects. So he really, he aligns the products along with, you know, from my side, it's operations, sales, and marketing. So, you know, it's a joint. We both work together and have very distinct roles.

So, so it's a, it's, it's great having— that's why, you know, I'm co-founder. I'm not absolute. Absolutely founder, because, you know, I feel like a great team has, you know, some, some all-stars part of that team, and it's never one person. So how do you stay close to the pain points of your users and customers to adapt the product to meet those evolving needs? Yeah, man, Mo, that's, that is the, you know, I think that's the golden question for software companies.

And, and if And what we did at RamQuest and what we did with the next software company after RamQuest and what we're doing now, it's always listening to the customer and staying really close and talking to the customer. And if you're willing to listen, customers will tell you what's going on and they'll tell you the challenges. They'll tell you why your product's not working the way they expect it to work or they need it to work. And if you listen to them, you can, you can you can build something that's great. And that's a core philosophy here at Alana is interacting with our customers.

And yeah, that's how we stay connected is through our customer partnerships. And yeah. So as we are coming close to the end of our conversation of final signature questions that I always ask our guests, Do you have a favorite quote? Yeah, my favorite quote is, do hard things. Love it.

That's our family mantra. And that's my personal quote. And do you have a favorite book or favorite book you read recently to share with the audience? Well, my favorite book is Good to Great. You know, that's a core book.

You know, the current book I'm reading right now is A Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. It is a— it's a great book. I would suggest every leader, you know, look at, read it, because in today's world, staying transparent and vulnerable in a leadership position is so key. So we've always talked about emotional intelligence, but there's There's more intelligence beyond emotional intelligence. So I'm an avid reader and I like to continue to apply what I read to my daily activities.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Hoyt, for— it was tons of insight. I truly appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you, Mo. I appreciate the invite.

I'm glad we were able to do it. Well, thanks again to Hoyt Mann for joining us and sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how Alana that AI is transforming title operations. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and share with your fellow title pros. And please give us a 5-star review. That would mean a lot.

And as always, thank you for listening to the Title Agents Podcast. Till next time. And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Choumil from the Title Agents Podcast, reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key in the title industry's fast-paced world. If you're finding it tough to keep up with the changes and challenges, remember, you're not alone. Our calendar is open for you.

Find the link in the show notes and let's connect. Make sure to hit subscribe to not miss out on strategies that elevate and insights that empower. Together, we'll navigate the future of the industry. I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode.