The latest SPOTLIGHT article takes a slightly different format to others and we were able to speak at length to the team at NOW who have been partners with Broadband Compare since last year. NOW is a Hawke’s Bay based phone and broadband provider that has really made its mark in the last five years. The company is bigger than people expect and having great success and NOW boasts over 12,000 customers and employs around 60 staff, with offices in Hawkes Bay, Rotorua, Hutt Valley and Tauranga.
When we asked the NOW Broadband CEO Hamish White what was behind the growth he said; “For us, it has been about getting the basics right and providing good old-fashioned customer service. Small things like answering the phone within 60 seconds, and not to mention speaking to someone in New Zealand goes a long way”.
NOW’s unique service centric business model boasts its own field technicians and an in-home digital concierge service, which is part of what sets this company apart from its competitors – NOW is New Zealand’s only telco that will come to your home (for a small fee, which customers willingly pay, says Hamish). This, coupled with unrivaled accessibility and responsiveness to customers’ phone and broadband requirements, is a unique proposition the big players can’t compete with. It was this innovative 'Techsperts' service which allowed NOW to walk away as a Broadband Compare Award Winner in 2017 and an area of their offering that continues to grow.
From day one Hamish felt the opportunity to add value and carve out a defendable point of difference in the industry, lay in its service and support going beyond customers’ routers/modems – the traditional demarcation point for telco’s who typically tell customers to speak to an IT company (or someone who cares, Hamish cheekily points out).
“We believe customers deserve more than that. At NOW we continue to base our model on our customers. The pace of innovation as it relates to Wi-Fi, IT, home entertainment, security, surveillance, and home automation is only exacerbating customers’ frustration with the growing complexity of a typical home’s digital capability.”
Hamish says that because of the rapid speed that technology is evolving and changing, NOW is driving to become the antithesis of NZ’s conventional telco. Where it sees its future as a DSP (digital service provider) rather than an ISP (internet service provider).
We are aspiring to help customers digitally enable their homes – it’s a bonus that we just happen to offer one of New Zealand’s most reliable and high performing internet services.
If you are interested in getting some help from NOW's Techsperts then visit their dedicated page for more details here.
To find out more about NOW Phone & Internet and compare NOW Broadband plans - Click Here