It's the other Bay for NOW

NOW CEO Hamish White is expanding his horizons Photo/File

Hawke's Bay-based phone and broadband provider NOW is opening a Tauranga office.
The company already has more than 12,000 customers and 70 staff across offices in Hawke's Bay, Rotorua and Wellington.

CEO Hamish White said success was based on providing "good old-fashioned customer service" such as quickly speaking with someone in New Zealand.

As part of the Tauranga launch on September 30 the company was "pushing the service model even more" with its own field technicians and "in-home techspert service".

NOW was moving towards being a digital services provider instead of an internet service provider, a move successful in the business market, he said.

"From day one we have felt the opportunity to add value and carve out a defendable point of difference in the industry, lay in our 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," he said.

"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.

The Company partnered with multinational Mitel for cloud-hosted PBX and unified interfaces. Uptake from accountancy, real estate, law and medical practices was "phenomenal".

"The team at NOW is really excited to be rolling out in to Tauranga as we cement our vision 'to bring the possibilities of our customers' digital worlds to life'. We can't wait to help more customers wrangle the technology they're struggling with at home, and to help businesses realise their digital capabilities. We just want to get it sorted so customers can love what the internet and technology, together, enables. No other company can offer that total package, and that's not only compelling for customers, but for our team too."