Case Study
Admin Chaos Replaced with Time to Sell
Three branches. One joined-up process.
About Hunters
Bridlington, Filey, and Scarborough
Hunters is a long-established estate agency with branches in Filey, Bridlington, and Scarborough – high-volume offices operating in densely populated coastal and market towns. Speed and efficiency are central to the business model: properties need to reach market quickly, and the team needs to be on the phones building relationships, not buried in paperwork.
Sam heads up the business across all three branches. Lauren is senior branch manager at Scarborough. Michelle works at the Bridlington branch. Between them, they paint a vivid picture of what life looked like before Kotini – and what it looks like now.
The challenge
Before Kotini, onboarding at Hunters was, in Sam’s words, “quite disjointed.” The team had worked their way through multiple approaches to AML and client onboarding, and none of them had stuck.
The first approach was manual – low cost, but labour-intensive and, crucially, unreliable from a compliance standpoint. The second was outsourcing the process entirely to a third-party supplier. That introduced a different set of problems: slow turnaround times, inconsistent service levels, and a loss of control that made the team uncomfortable.
The breaking point came in December. Hunters were trialling their previous provider during what is typically a quieter month for instructions. Even with reduced volume, clients were complaining and the process was taking too long.
We couldn’t carry that over into January, February and into spring when we list some very high numbers. That was the real point where we thought – something needs to change.
Sam Lakin, Director
Life before Kotini was very stressful – things took a lot longer than they needed to. There were a lot of platforms we had to use.
Lauren Spivey, Senior Branch Manager
We really struggled to get access to people very quickly – we could go days without hearing from anybody.
Michelle Savage, Negotiator
Why Kotini stood out
When the team evaluated alternatives, Kotini was the clear winner – not because it was the loudest or the most marketed option, but because it was the most complete.
For Sam, the decision went beyond features. Hunters invest heavily in their brand and their marketing – and handing a client over to a third-party tool at one of the most emotionally significant moments of their lives (selling their home) felt like a risk. White-labelling changed that entirely.
We looked into quite a few different companies and felt that Kotini was the one that offered everything. Every other platform – there was something missing. This one offered absolutely everything we were looking at.
Lauren Spivey, Senior Branch Manager
When we’re passing a customer over to a third party at a really sensitive point in time – when they’ve just trusted us to sell their property – it’s important that that continues. We thought it looked great, white-labelled to us.
Sam Lakin, Director
Shared ethos and vision
Sam also took the long view on the platform’s direction of travel. Believing in what Kotini is building – a genuinely joined-up process – gave him confidence this was a strategic decision, not just a tactical fix.
A shared ethos between Kotini and Sam’s business. Excited about the future of this partnership.
When we chose Kotini it was all about trying to have something that fit with our ethos – which is, you know, modern, looks really good. All of our marketing looks really good. When we’re passing a customer over to a third party at a really sensitive point in time, when they’ve just trusted us to sell their property, it’s important that that continues from there on in. And we thought it looked great, white-labelled to us.
I like where the future looks with Kotini. I know what the roadmap looks like. What I believe in is a joined-up process – which is ultimately going to be better for the customer and better for the agents.
Sam Lakin, Director
It’s a lot quicker and more straightforward. You could do it out on appointment if you needed to. It saves a lot of time so we can actually spend time on selling properties and generating more business, rather than doing admin tasks.
Lauren Spivey, Senior Branch Manager
Compliance control, visibility and speed
For a high-volume business like Hunters, the ability to see exactly where each client is in their onboarding journey – and to act on it immediately – has been transformative.
The result is that properties get to market faster, with less manual chasing and fewer delays. The team can even complete onboarding at the point of the valuation appointment if needed – something that simply wasn’t possible before.
We can see exactly where the customer is within their onboarding journey. If we need to chase, we do – but the system sends great automated chasers as well.
Sam Lakin, Director
Ease of use...
for the team and for clients!
It’s quite self-explanatory. So much more user-friendly than anything we’ve used before. The training from the Kotini team was really thorough – but also people came in and we navigated it together and it was really fast, really simple.
Michelle Savage, Negotiator
For Sam, watching his team grow in confidence with the platform has been one of the quieter satisfactions of the switch.
The responsiveness of the Kotini support team has been a consistent theme across all three voices in the conversation.
I’ll be honest, the support on the other end of Kotini has been fantastic – so it’s very quick and responsive. If we’ve got an issue where we can’t answer a customer’s question, we just enter into the chat and the problems are solved really, really quickly. So far, very, very impressed.
Sam Lakin, Director
The cost around compliance on us is growing and growing – and why should we be absorbing that? It was just the fear of how to present it. So we came up with some great cheat sheets – we’ve called them ‘values’ for all team members, so they can handle any objections and pitch it in the best way.
Sam Lakin, Director
What about charging for AML and onboarding?
One of the most candid parts of the conversation covers a topic many agents still shy away from: charging clients for AML checks. Hunters have been ahead of the curve here, and their experience should be reassuring to those still hesitating.
Moving to charging vendors was driven by a simple commercial reality: compliance costs are rising, and there is no good reason for agents to keep absorbing them. The internal solution was practical – a set of cheat sheets giving every team member the language to present the charge confidently and handle any objections.
We weren’t charging vendors for AML because we had the same fear a lot of agents have – that we’d lose instructions. We’ve been charging buyers for nigh on a year and found little to no objections. In fact, last year I think we had under 1% – and each of those who objected actually pulled out from the sale.
Sam Lakin, Director
The bigger picture
Sell more properties…
Underneath all the process improvements and time savings, there is a more fundamental shift at Hunters – a shift in how the team spends its day.
It’s been a godsend. We’ve noticed that in the space we’ve had, we have more time to deliver more impactful customer service to existing clients, but also to have more meaningful conversations with new clients – making sure we know their requirements, their expectations, and being able to give more of what I suppose is a real relationship.
Michelle Savage, Negotiator
This is a people industry. I would rather the teams in the office be on the phones having more meaningful conversations with our customers – not rushing to get off the phone because they’re panicking about a list of admin to do afterwards. We can instruct, send it off, put the onus on the customer to fill out the information – and the team can focus on something else. Ideally, finding more business.
Sam Lakin, Director
For Sam, this is what it all comes back to. Kotini isn’t just a compliance tool or an onboarding platform. It’s what makes it possible for his team to be the agents they want to be.
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