When Māori-founded company AskNicely moved into the B:HIVE last August they were intentional about celebrating the support of the mana whenua, with a pōwhiri and a blessing.
Now less than a year later the company is celebrating winning Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau – Māori Company of the Year.
AskNicely is guided by Kaupapa Māori (the Māori way of doing things) and is proud to shine a light on Māori success in the technology sector.
CEO Aaron Ward, (Ngāti Maru) is hoping more Māori and Pasifika will see there is a genuine pathway in technology. “The rate of participation in the technology sector by Māori is woefully low. Māori kids need Māori heroes,” he says.
AskNicely helps businesses make every customer experience a success and has teams in the US and Europe serving millions of customers across the world. The company collects feedback from the customer after they have an experience with a frontline worker. This is forwarded to the worker directly through an app on their phone.
“There’s plenty of ways to collect feedback from customers, we’ve all seen those silly long surveys that lots of companies inflict upon their customers. What we do is we make sure that feedback doesn’t go to an analyst or some sort of report for managers to look at – we make sure it goes directly to the person that serves them. So that they know what they do matters, they are caught in the act of doing things right.”
AskNicely’s executive team from the U.S flew in to celebrate the awards last month at a glitzy ceremony in Christchurch. Ask Nicely has 25 staff at the B:HIVE, and other 25 in the United States and several in Amsterdam.
“This is where the discovery work was done, the design work was done. This is where the building is done. And then we have the rest of our business, our teams in the US and in Europe that go out and market our product around the world.”