How to Use AI in Title Operations Without Replacing Your Team | Title Agents Podcast Ep69

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shamil 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. Today's guest is a returning guest, Hope Arabiani, and today's topic is the AI-Driven Title Team, Empowering People Through Technology.

Hope, welcome to the show. Hello. So you've said before that AI isn't about replacement, it's about empowerment. What does that mean for leaders in title? Well, for me personally, I can tell you it's about maximizing my time, because there's never enough time in the day to do all that we do and to talk to all the people we can.

So any given week, I mean, I've got 10 plus meetings, 500 plus emails a day, you know. So I use AI to empower and maximize my time, my thoughts, outlines, SOPs, insights, any weakness I have, I could use AI to kind of offset that, right? If I don't think out of the box, let AI do it, and then I can kind of customize and collaborate with it to get the product that I need to deliver. So for me, it's just maximizing time and giving me that work-life balance, especially as a mom of two young kids, I need to have that balance, and AI allows me to do that. How has your own view of AI evolved over the past couple of years as all tech nationally integrated more automation and AI workflows?

Yeah, and I know as an operations person by heart, at heart, I always assumed that it was going to replace my team, and I've got a big heart, I love my team, everybody's been there for years. So I immediately thought it was going to replace my team, but it's not. We just don't want to throw bodies at a problem, we want to improve the way they work, improve the way they think. So it's not replacing your team members, it's augmenting what they already do, helping them to focus on their strengths, and what is more important in a transaction. So that's all we're doing is just utilizing AI, the automation smart action triggers to help give them the same balanced life that I lead.

As I say, and you're not going to lose your job to AI, but you would lose your job to somebody using AI. That is so true. Especially how simple, how easy it is. You don't have to be an engineer or techie. So that mental block has kind of get rid of that mental block and open your mind.

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So having somebody think for me. What is that? Yeah, I know. So like speeches, if anybody speaks, I can analyze everything and write like a 20 page essay on like one commercial. I love it.

So I'm really analytical. I love using my brain to think critically, but it's like AI is kind of taking that away. Most people would think that's how I felt too, because that was my major. So it's like, oh my gosh, I can't write essays anymore about things I love to criticize. So it's more so using AI to just think differently.

That's all it is. And then you have to feed it the information. You've got to customize it and personalize it the way you think. It's not replacing how you think, it's helping how you think. Because I may see one view, but AI will allow me to see 14 other views, and then I can come back around and give an educated product and educated delivery of what I was thinking in the first place.

So that's what I was trying to say. So just use AI to help you and empower you. So what are some specific ways Alltech National uses AI today, whether in processing, communication, training, workflows? So the first thing, I mean, we have an automated receptionist. Her name is Annie.

That's helped get people to the right place and it answers questions. I fed it a bunch of normal questions that people ask, hours, what is title insurance, stuff like that. So I fed it all that. And it was able to respond effectively on the phone for those small questions that you don't have to waste your time during the day on. But we also use it with opening contracts.

It's still in its elementary stages with our title platform, but you can bulk open a bunch of contracts and then kind of go through and see how well it did. We also import title commitments automatically through the system. I use outlines and SOPs if I'm in 20 meetings a week and I'm leading them all. I mean, what better way to maximize my time than to provide proactive outlines that it can provide me? I give it the information.

It just puts it in an organized format. That's all. And then responding to clients professionally, especially when people take the tone of email so personally in our industry. It's nice to have AI kind of give you a format that sounds professional. You can tell it to write in a certain tone, especially I've got a lot of operations people that can get a little defensive.

Have AI write a professional email that sounds a little better, it's still from you, but just more professionally in a better tone. And I believe, and we use Qualia, so I know that they have, I guess when you respond to emails through Connect, Qualia Connect, it gives you options to pre-formatted emails. It's warmer, more professional, not as cold. It's quick too. And it gives you three options and three different tones.

If you want to be short and direct, that's tone one. Second one, hi, smiley face, that's tone two. And then tone three. So it gives you three options. You can just select one, but it writes it out for you and it can read the whole file.

And you know how escrow officers and processors are so overwhelmed and they multitask and so many things. And if you catch a person at the wrong time, and it's typically introvert, and if you catch a person at the wrong time, they may respond and that response may come across cold, even though they do not mean to be cold, but that realtor, that lender, that customer, they may think that person was very rude or so kind of, it's a great way to kind of use a leverage to soften that tone, make more professional, more warmer. I couldn't have said better. I agree. How do you ensure AI supports team members instead of overwhelming them?

Well, I like to get their buy-in first before I make any changes, right? Oh, I'm just going to throw AI at you. This podcast is made possible by our sponsor. You have worked so hard to build your business. So why do 70 to 80% of businesses never sell?

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Trust me, we've done it and then it didn't work. Make sure that you get your direct oversight. Get their buy-in. Heck, send a survey out to the entire company. Get those buy-ins.

Is this going to help or is it going to hurt? What way of communication is going to improve the workflow? What is not? I definitely get their buy-in. I constantly check in with my teams.

I call it pulse checks. After we've implemented a change, I do pulse checks for like 30 days afterwards every week. Hey, how's this working for your workflow? Because every region is different, right? How's this working?

Is it hindering? We go through those constant pulse checks. We get their feedback, get their buy-in, and then just ask them, how is it going to make their lives easier? What areas of title operations are best suited for AI support right now and also for sales? I can touch on sales after you go about operation.

Yeah. So operations, I mean, underwriters have already been doing it, but title searches, residential title searches, not commercial, but the refinance title searches are very simple for AI. Data entry. I mean, it can read documents. What does that mean, simple for AI?

Can you elaborate? For the residential title search? Or what do you mean? Yeah, the instant. You're talking about instant title search, correct?

Yeah. So we have a few underwriters who provide instant title searches, and they're only current owner right now, but there are a few that are pushing out full 60-year searches, 40, 60-year searches. If you think about it, yes, it needs to be examined, but AI can read land records, right? It's not hard. Okay.

This name matches to this name. So they make it quicker, more efficiently. They pull a lot of data from a lot of different access points, and then they give you a product. The instant, you're talking about instant title search, correct? Yeah, so we have an underwriter who, a few underwriters who provide instant title searches and they're only current owner right now, but there are a few that are pushing out full 60-year searches, 40, 60-year searches.

And if you think about it, yes, it needs to be examined, but AI can read land records, right? It's not hard. Okay, this name matches to this name. They can do it quicker, more efficiently. They pull a lot of data from a lot of different access points and they give you a product and then the underwriter that we use, they give us like everything, the exceptions are laid out, the requirements are laid out, everything's separated, which is beautiful because then we can tie it as an hyperlink to the lenders on the commitments.

So yeah, it's just very quick. We get it back in five minutes on the current owner searches, which will help in those bifurcated states as well on the buy side. So it's a very simple product, but title searches, residential, data entry, data importing, SOPs, as I said before, outlines and meetings, because you want high-level bullet points. Quality control, I know we're working on some qualia products that'll hopefully come through and give us quality control checks before going to closing versus an old school checklist. And then virtual assistants, that's been very helpful too.

And as far as sales, I mean, the marketing piece is a lot, and I'm sure majority of people already can figure this out, how to write content, how to write emails, and also the more details you give it, ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever your flavor that you like, they're all pretty much fairly similar. You can literally lay out to map out a marketing campaign for the whole year. Okay. I'm in Washington, D.C., my audience is real estate agents. This is kind of the price point, and help me lay out a marketing campaign, social posts, like literally can lay out a whole year for you if you find it.

But one specific tool with more intel that's amazing, like for when you have meeting a prospect for the first time, let's say a realtor or lender first time, is literally asking ChatGPT or Gemini, hey, I'm meeting John Smith with Compass or EXP, whatever the agency is. And they're kind of giving a little more detail, so make sure it pulls data, the accurate data about that agent. And do research and let me know the hot topics and how to approach this person, and literally be amazed at the response it gives you, that gives you this amazing feedback about their background, their history, their production, what's important to them. There's all this internet search, it's really scary. It gives you what's their style to communicate with them, I don't know how it figures that out.

Are they more technical? Are they more outgoing? And it gives you the hot topics, what to touch on, if they need charitable giving they do, to touch base on that, any hobbies. It literally gives you so much intel, so when you go to that meeting, you feel like you know that person inside and out. We never met them.

We need to dig more into using AI for sales and marketing, so maybe a future episode. Yeah, I agree. How do you get buy-in from team members who may feel anxious or skeptical about AI? Oh boy, we get a lot of those. I have to show results.

So usually whenever I implement a change with automation triggers or AI, I test it out with my local region first, because they're all used to it. They've all been here for a while, they're right directly under me. So I test it out in my region first, I show the results, I give them the metrics, and I say, this is how much time we were able to save in one day on one transaction, whatever. So I give them the metrics, I give them how we were able to save time, and then I get their buy-in, they tell me maybe that won't work in my region, that won't work, and then we adjust the new approach for their region, and then we implement it. So I don't just go throw it at every single region and have fun.

You have to do it by chunks. You have to do one region, perfect it, next region, perfect it, and then get their buy-in every single time. You got to keep that constant communication going as well. So I show results and I show the data to the other teams, and then when they test it, they love it. So how do you balance the precision of AI with the nuance of human judgment?

Well, precision or imprecision sometimes. I know it's still evolving. Yeah, yeah. Well, to me, a human thinks very linear. So they've got guardrails on and blinders, so they're very linear thinking.

So like I said before, use AI to kind of think wholly and more rounded. So because we always think with our past experiences, our history, our background, but you can use AI to give you a more well-rounded approach, a well-rounded response. So meetings are great. You should use it as a thought partner because you're another brain using your brain. Yeah.

And as a leader, it's like having an entire team of creative assistants. I didn't have to hire anybody. I have a whole team of creative assistants. They give me the ideas. I'm like, thanks, great idea.

It's like having a creative team. Thanks, great idea. I'll pull that idea from you, pull this idea from you, and make my own product. It's ultimately my product. I'm a maestro of an orchestra of amazing...

It is. Whatever role you want for them, they're either creative thinkers, marketing geniuses, or... Yes. With the technical kind of skills you wanted to have, or coaches. I use that as a coach as well, too.

Exactly. Same. Especially with like... Therapists for some people. Learning curves.

Yeah. I mean, it just helps me think unconventionally and creatively. And it's like having my own little team. So as you know, an operations person, they think about timelines, strict operations, quality control processes. A salesperson may think about cutting corners, getting to the end, how to sell to people.

But you can use both those mindsets into one without having to hire anybody else or have a meeting. All of that can be done through AI. You can get both buy-ins just by feeding it the right information. Have you seen measurable performance or efficiency gains since implementing AI? Honestly, with the market the way it is, I mean, we haven't fully experienced all the automation and AI that we've put into place yet.

Like more business. Because the market is kind of stagnant. But I can't wait till when we get a refi boom because I've done so much for that residential refi space to automate the title searches, automate the task completions, automate... Like you could probably do a refinance completely through AI. If you wanted to.

A regular residential refinance, you probably could. But I'm just ready for that next boom because of all the 200 plus smart action triggers that we've been growing and perfecting and tweaking and all that stuff. So I haven't fully scaled to where we want to be. But we've been able to take on the same amount of transactions with no fully new hires. So yes, it's helped a lot.

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You can do it. Honest to God, you can do it. So I would love to build that out and test it out once we get the refi boom and stuff. I've tested out a few. But again, you got to get those tweaks out.

So refinances is one. Also administrative tasks like ordering HOAs, payoffs. I think that's the thing of the future as well. I know we've got an entire team and they're wonderful. But that's going to be the future is taking the information input by the client within the system, automatically ordering HOA and payoffs through email, automation triggers.

I can just think of it right now how to implement it. I think that's the future. I can add to that. Also see the title examination is probably one of the biggest pieces in writing. I'm sure it's in the works if quality is working on it and also end writers working on it if it's not there already.

Because it's literally one of the hardest pieces of the title examination because there are not that many people that do it. Most people are retiring. Agreed. There's a need and that's a piece that can easily kind of with the oversight of a title examiner can oversee, double, triple the amount of files versus kind of having to look at one at a time. And also I'm sure like in creation of a CD, like a perfect quality control piece.

It's already there. Yeah. And I think that the one thing that I don't know how it's going to work or how it should work is really having like a communication piece, like customers, like they can reach out. They don't have to talk to you, but it can via messaging, find all the information you need about a file, kind of ask questions directly to the platform or whatever. I'm sure there's some services, but not everything integrates properly.

Yeah. It can be seamless. Like, hey, I have a quality connect or whatever your platform is. And as a customer, like, hey, I want to find that information. having like a communication piece, like customers, like they can reach out, they don't have to talk to you, but it can be a messaging, find all the information you need about a file, kind of ask questions directly to the, to the platform or whatever, I'm sure there's some services, but not everything integrates properly.

And they can be seamless, like, Hey, I have a transit, I have a, say a quality connect or whatever your, your platform is, and as a customer, like, Hey, I want to find that information about a file, even more conversational versus having to email or message them, like the escrow officer. Today's episode is sponsored by. Hey, you title agents, stop wasting time digging for answers or waiting on an email or call back from your underwriter with title GPT.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. Yeah.

And, and to piggyback off the commitment piece, like qualia already has like in their admin section. I haven't implemented it yet. I would love to, but qualia has a section where you can add automatic requirements and exceptions based on what you input in the contact section or whatever. So if you add an organization, it'll automatically add LLC requirements or whatever, you know, or if somebody died, it'll automatically add those state specific transfer on death requirement or whatever it is. So you could build that out per state, per region.

And I haven't done it yet, but that's the future. I mean, it's going to be so cool. And, uh, the, the, uh, other pieces, um, uh, mining the customer data, like more for customer support, kind of. Figuring out, uh, cause I don't know, I've been pushing qualia to have their own CRM for a long time, but it's, uh, one thing that's, uh, being able to collect a mandate data, no cause in the clients who's sending a business instead of the reports are very cumbersome, but being able to, Hey, I want to, I want to, uh, I'm a motion wheel. I want to see which my clients sent me the most business last month.

So it can something, uh, Hey, uh, who hasn't sent me business for over three months, going to be a lot of intelligence. So it'd be able to more kind of, um, uh, optimize the relationship and that the touch points would be cool. You could just like type it in, like through the AI portal. Carlos. Simply instead of, uh, trying to figure out how to, it's just kind of this like a dream list, which you need to send this to, um, to Nate or somebody.

Yeah. What's one, a small, safe way an agency could start using AI this quarter to make life easier for their team? Probably the, the title searches and the title commitment. I mean, the, the system we use qualia, it auto imports it already. So it already gives you the product within seconds.

So title searches is really easy. The automated task clearing. I don't know what platform people use, but a lot of them are already doing the triggers and task completion based on movement in the file. I think that's something very easy that you could implement. Oh, when a seller info sheet comes in, it auto completes that task.

Oh, when you update, you know, upload a lender title request, it auto completes that task. Very simple. That's going to help mitigate, you know, minimize some time on your staff as well. Um, and then data entry, like, uh, opening contracts that would. That's very easy as well.

If the system allows it, whatever platform people are using, but yeah, opening orders, bulk order contracts, the system will read it as long as it's not like a handwritten wholesale contract or something that we found that's a little tough, but yeah, definitely, uh, the title commitment, title searches and auto completions along with the order entry. Uh, any last words of wisdom about, uh, implementing using AI? I'm sure we're going to have more, more, uh, podcast episodes on AI, but it's just, um, any last words? Don't be afraid of it. I mean, I moan, I can't say that time and time again, especially somebody who loves critically thinking and writing.

I am a poet. I love poetry. AI is like taking my job from me, pretty much my hobby from me, but don't be afraid of it, have it, empower you, use it to, to when I can't think of ideas for dinner some nights, I'm like, what can I make with some, this, this, this, and this. And it gives me a day. I'm like, oh, the kids loved it.

You know, just have it think for you, not think for you, but like think with you. When you're just partner. Yeah. Because when, when, especially as a mother of two and I'm moving, I'm go, go, go, go, go. It's nice to have an assistant, if you will, or a team of creative assistants to kind of have that stuff already thought for me, especially outlines for meetings.

And then I don't have to think about it and I can spend time with my family. Well, uh, hope. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and, uh, thanks to all our audience for joining another episode of the Thalassian podcast, please don't forget to subscribe, but most importantly, give us a pop-start ready. So next time. Thank you.

And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Shamil from the title agents podcast, reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key and 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.