Open Listings scaled to serve 500,000 home buyers with Front

Open Listings scaled their home-buying service using Front to maintain total consistency in their emails to clients and work more efficiently.

Open Listings, acquired by Opendoor in 2018, is an all-in-one home buying service that makes buying a home more efficient and affordable. They’ve helped buyers purchase more than half a billion dollars worth of homes while saving them more than $5 million in agent fees.

Buyers use an app to house hunt, ask questions, book tours, and get property reports instantly. When they’re ready to make an offer, they get paired with a top-rated local agent. Because Open Listings agents only spend time on the contract and negotiations part of the process, they're able to refund buyers 50 percent of their commission refund — on average, $7,000 per home.

Challenge

Teamwork is central to Open Listings’ business model. Unlike using a traditional real estate agent, buyers don't rely on a single agent for all parts of the home buying process. Instead, they spread the work across specialized teams. That way they can give better answers, complete offers faster, and eliminate busy work for agents.

Their teams are spread across multiple states, serving hundreds of thousands of buyers in several markets. Keeping partner agents, escrow transaction coordinators, and a buyer-experience team all on the same page was difficult. Plus, they didn’t want their team-based model to sacrifice consistent, high-quality customer service.

Director of Growth Kevin Miller said having so many moving parts came with some challenges, however. “It was hard to feel unified, and the team wasted hours digging through client emails to find information,” he explained.

We knew Front could keep us organized and consistent in a way no other tool could. 

- Kevin Miller, Director of Growth, Open Listings

Solution

In order to scale and succeed, Open Listings needed to centralize communication across teams and with customers. They started using Front to give their teams a single source of truth. “We knew Front could keep us organized and consistent in a way no other tool could,” Miller said.

Results

Efficiency = Scalability

Front gave Open Listings the efficiency they needed to scale their business. By bringing all their communications into one place, they’re now able to serve hundreds of thousands of home buyers. Teammates can always pick up where someone else left off, because important information is easy to find. They save hours of mindless work each day because they don’t have to hunt down emails.

Total consistency

Front enables Open Listings to keep a high standard for support and success, even as they rapidly grow. “Front lets us deliver a consistent experience, no matter where you are, or who you are,” Miller said. Getting new teammates up to speed is a breeze. “Canned responses and drafts let us see messages before they’re sent and have total quality control,” he noted. With one platform, there are no missed opportunities, and no message falls through the cracks.

Team unity that shows

“Front is so impactful because it fosters that ‘we’re in it together’ feeling for us,” Miller reflected. “Our customers are happier as a result.” They tightly monitor their NPS scores, which are consistently higher with Front. The team often gets messages from customers who are impressed by the timeliness and thoroughness of their responses. “Using Front is the only way we can have a team that provides the great level of service we do to this many people,” Miller said.

Front is so impactful because it fosters that ‘we’re in it together’ feeling for us.

- Kevin Miller, Director of Growth, Open Listings

Open Listings + Front

In 2018, the Open Listings team looks forward to expanding to help more people find the property that’s right for them. “Front’s versatility lets us work on and achieve new objectives — it just makes the best business sense,” Miller said.

“Instead of two or four or ten tools, Front lets us have just one,” he said. With Front, Open Listings can take control and make the process of buying a home easy for their customers.