Letting agencies: How Hello Neighbour used KeyNest to expand their lettings operations in the UK
Combining technology with first-rate customer service, Hello Neighbour offer lettings and property management services for the Internet age. Hello Neighbour ensures that landlords and tenants receive top-notch service while benefiting from transparent and affordable fees.
How to grow a lettings agency built for the Internet age?
With a small team and big growth plans, Richard Jenkins, the co-founder of Hello Neighbour, knew he needed a solution to help him manage the keys to properties remotely and at scale, and that manual key pickups were not a way to manage his growing enterprise.
Richard comments on the very beginning of the partnership with KeyNest:
“Managing our keys effectively and safely across a wide geographical area has been essential to our business model since the beginning. At the start of our journey, I was disheartened after looking at options like electronic locks or lockboxes. Then I called KeyNest. Back then, their focus was on Airbnb but after chatting with KeyNest’s Co-Founder, we came to a solution that worked perfectly and allowed our business model to thrive. Today, I don't want any keys in our office, they must all be kept safely in a KeyNest, ready to be utilised whenever needed by our tradesmen.”
A key access solution used by every employee of the agency:
Richard mentions that using KeyNest Points just made a lot of sense and answered the needs of a fast-growing lettings agency like Hello Neighbour. He praises the simplicity of the implementation, which took just a couple of minutes of onboarding and then dropping a key in a local KeyNest Point.
“We now have the whole team using KeyNest. From the Sales Team to the Account Management team that deals with the tenant match and move-in-process and the Customer Happiness team, who deal with booking the keys to make sure they're available whenever needed.
And then we've got viewing agents picking up the keys from Points daily as well as cleaners, inventory and maintenance staff. So several different people in the organisation need to access the keys and have to drop them off using KeyNest - and because the whole system is simple to understand and use, I don’t have to worry about managing the keys in a manual way ever again.”
Day-to-day use of KeyNest by Hello Neighbour:
Richard mentions that the experience with KeyNest Points has been excellent, and the one time when he needed to get involved in a problematic situation, it got resolved quickly.
“I remember one case when there was a minor miscommunication about a key status. KeyNest Customer Care got involved right away and solved the case in minutes. And to be fair, the Customer Service at KeyNest has been generally great. They are knowledgeable and know how to solve operational problems quickly.”
Richard ends the story about KeyNest with a highlight of the importance of this solution for companies like his. He claims it’s hard to grow at scale without a dependable partner in operations, like KeyNest.
“It's a fundamental part of the business and a cornerstone of how we can do what we do. “
