We were thrilled to invite Taylor & Emmet to chat with us about their experiences with Minerva, from set up through to using it across the business.
CEO Steve Hinshelwood, IT Director Nigel Hoar and New Business Manager Elisha Burgil joined us to chat candidly.
What problems were you trying to solve with Minerva’s portal?
The House moving process has been taking too long. And we were looking at ways in which we could reduce the timescales for the benefit of all parties involved, obviously ourselves, our referral partners, estate agents, brokers, etc. But of course, particularly for the clients, who are increasingly frustrated by the delays in the house moving process.
In our view, the Minerva portal offers a really great opportunity to help enhance the customer experience and speed up that process. It digitises the front end of the onboarding process. And by doing that in the compliant manner that it does, it actually allows us to start the conveyancing work far quicker than historically we had been doing and ultimately deliver a quicker end to end completion of the process which is fundamentally what our clients want.
Before we implemented the Minerva portal, our systems were slow and paper heavy. On average, it would take two to three weeks to open a file.
What was the bottom line that meant you decided to implement Minerva?
A feature that sold me on committing to Minerva were the fact that it speeds up the client onboarding process, whilst allowing us to engage with clients more than we did previously.
From a technical viewpoint how easy has it been to install and configure?
From a technical standpoint, installation was very simple. A lot of it was handled by Law Firm Services.
They have a system that takes your emails produced by the system and prevents them from going into a customer spam, which works very well. From a compliance perspective, the portal is very beneficial in particular with regards to the money laundering and ID verification process, which we found to be absolutely first class.
It’s quick, it’s efficient, it’s effective, and from a client’s point of view, it has been a huge transformation in the way we work, all automated and no need for clients to attend the business.
Does it make the file opening process easier / more streamlined?
A lot of our existing clients that have been on boarded using our paper process previously have found it is less daunting and receiving it via the portal, and being able to do it at a time that’s convenient for them.
Minerva is a very cost effective product. In our opinion,
I definitely do think that we are winning more business as a result of using Minerva. And I think that’s just because it’s a much smoother and quicker process for the client to be able to be on boarded.
How have you used Minerva with your local introducers ?
We’ve introduced Minerva and the option of the client portal to all of our main local estate agency and broker introducers and now 90% of our introducer businesses coming through the portal.
The introduction of Minerva has helped Taylor and Emmet achieve its aspirations of becoming a more digitally able firm for the benefit of its clients.
Do you think you are winning more business as a result of using Minerva?
Working with Minerva has definitely improved the businesses day to day processes; it is much easier to onboard clients and engage with them. It allows us to manage their expectations, they understand the timelines and can clearly see what they need to do through the portal.
Though the introduction of Minerva within all departments, we believe we’re now in a position to significantly speed up the house buying process which is for the benefit of all parties involved.
