What was capping them
Every lot generated questions. Condition, collection, commission, can I bid by phone. They all landed in one shared mailbox, and three people took turns wading through it. The same enquiry got answered twice, or not at all. On a sale week the backlog set the pace of the whole office, and nobody could take on more lots without drowning.
What we built
A single board that every enquiry flows into automatically. Each one is tagged by lot, by sale, and by what the person actually wants, then routed to the right person with the answer they need already attached. Nothing is re-typed. Nothing is answered twice.
The team still talks to buyers the same way. The difference is that the sorting, the chasing and the copying-out no longer lands on them. The admin that used to swallow a person and a half's time now handles itself.
What changed
The morning triage went from around two hours across three people to about ten minutes. That gives the team roughly one and a half people's worth of time back every day, to spend on the sale instead of the inbox. Same team, far more capacity: they took on more lots the following quarter without adding a single hire.
“It used to be the first two hours of everyone's morning. Now it's ten minutes.”
Saleroom manager