Foxtons wins loyal real estate clients with Adobe Acrobat Sign

In house hunting, the joy of a finding a dream home is often dampened by the experience of having to review, manage, and sign a lot of paperwork. For people who are buying, selling, or leasing, signatures are required on everything from disclosures to financial agreements and other terms and conditions. Traditionally this has involved time-consuming visits to a realtor’s office or the complex juggling of paperwork through printers, fax machines, or postal services.

Foxtons, London’s largest estate agency with more than 50 offices and 1,100 employees across the city and its surrounding communities, has a vision for continually improving the experience of transacting real estate. By pioneering a customer-facing web portal called My Foxtons more than a decade ago, the company blazed a leadership position in using technology to help provide the highest levels of service to tenants, property owners, and buyers.

Foxtons continues re-imagining customer and agent experiences, in part by using Adobe Acrobat Sign for streamlined electronic signatures and document routing automations. By handling document e-signings through its My Foxtons portal, the agency provides a branded, one-stop shop for transacting properties online, enabling customers to put their e-signature to important documentation with ease from a phone, tablet, or personal computer. The software makes for a more enjoyable process for busy customers and agents on the go, contributing to the agency’s high ratings on Trustpilot, where it’s earned four times as many 5-star reviews as any other London agency.

In recent years, the volume of lease and purchase agreements transacted through the portal has doubled. Today, Foxtons processes 110,000 documents annually with Acrobat Sign, aiding landlords in collecting rent while assisting buyers and sellers in property sales.

A consistent, branded experience powered by APIs

By continuing on a path of innovation and integrating Acrobat Sign Solutions APIs into its platform, the company has seamlessly embedded e-signatures into some 30 types of document templates used on My Foxtons, while maintaining a branded experience for clients that’s consistent across the online services the agency offers. Further fostering loyalty, Foxtons’ clients enjoy ongoing access to their e-signed documents in the document vault within My Foxtons. This convenient access to any digitised conveyance documents, disclosures, or other information that clients may need in the future, surrounded by Foxtons branding, contact information, and other services in the portal, helps increase the likelihood that clients will contact their Foxtons agent when they once again need real estate assistance.

The flexibility of the platform makes it easy for Foxtons to add new forms or modify document templates and workflows when regulations change, which happens often. This enables the agency to keep its many small-scale landlords on top of the latest compliance demands, further elevating the professionalism of its services

At the time of implementation, Foxtons had considered DocuSign, but found it lacked key requirements, particularly compared to Acrobat Sign with its flexible and powerful API capabilities. The API approach simplifies coding for the company’s IT team while enabling Foxtons to customise the experience by putting its own wizard widget in front of the e-signature experience to help explain common questions about costs and responsibilities.

The widget also solicits key pieces of information from the person about to sign the document and then populates the document with that data. “This helps the person signing feel more comfortable with the details. As a result, we mitigate concerns people sometimes have and eliminate delays, so our turnaround times are even shorter,” says Rajesh Patel, product director, Foxtons.

Sustainability and cost benefits

The digitisation of document signings has helped Foxtons save money by eliminating excess office space that in the past was crowded with filing cabinets of paperwork requiring storage for many years, in line with regulatory requirements. The reduction in use of paper has notable sustainability benefits too, with the equivalent of more than 13,000 trees and nearly 4.5 million kilograms in greenhouse gasses saved each year.

Foxtons’ management also appreciates how Acrobat Sign boosts the company’s productivity by accelerating transactions. “When we can do more deals in the space of a day and let the tech handle the complicated administrative work, that’s important to our efficiency,” says Patel.

The platform helps Foxtons differentiate its services in a competitive real estate market. “If we can put clients into their dream home with ease, they’ll come back around again when they want to upsell or downsize,” Patel says. “By delivering a great experience, we keep that loyalty cycle going.”

Expanded use of Acrobat Sign is being encouraged across a number of departments at Foxtons including HR, which uses the software for employment contracts. “Providing a tech-forward onboarding process sets the tone for our new hires,” says Patel. “It affirms that by joining Foxtons, they’ll have topnotch, time-saving tools at their disposal so they can focus on what they do best.”