A Brew with…Home Hunts
4 Jun 2015Here at OpenCRM, we do enjoy a good chinwag – who doesn’t? So each month we are going to have #ABrewWith an organisation, business, or a particular individual that we blooming love!
This month we are talking to Tim Swannie, CEO of Home Hunts, a global, luxury property specialist who has used our OpenCRM system to create a local voice.
Tell us a bit about your industry. How has the recession changed Home Hunts?
As one of the most-fast paced and evolving sectors in the world, the housing market is a notoriously difficult industry to crack. It’s a minefield of risks, gambles, and geographical restrictions, with longstanding traditions not always changing to reflect the demands and requirements of the 21st century property buyer.
Whilst the rest of the market felt the property slump, we were able to increase our enquiries and transactions by 35 percent by jumping into the 21st century and keeping everything remote.
Why did you decide to expand your business?
We set up as a fully registered Agent Immobilier in the South of France in 2005. At the time, in Nice alone there were 850 estate agents all based in the city, all vying for the same properties and exclusive client list.
We didn’t want to be agent number 851 so we decided to stand out from the crowd and offer a new service for the area—working as a “buyer’s agent” rather than a traditional seller’s agent.
What were the challenges you faced?
There was one big problem – if we become global, how do we ensure we have enough people and resources on the ground to cover the demand, deal with a potentially huge uplift in enquiries and transactions, and finally provide each client with the local, personal service that we promise to all of our clients?
The only true way that we could expect such global results and manage the overall business was through a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). It’s vital that we could guarantee that every single enquiry and transaction was dealt with in the same consistent manner that reflected the company’s ethos and messaging.
How has an OpenCRM system helped your business?
We needed OpenCRM to not only create a back office system that was entirely tailored to our business, provide unique pages and services only available to our team, but also offered a fantastic and flexible support service, which was essential to our global company.
The results speak for themselves, since taking on OpenCRM our web enquiries have increased dramatically, our team works efficiently whether they are in New York or Monaco and we all understand the common goal for Home Hunts.
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.