4.5 years ago, we created a business focused unit within Lightwire, one that was to be focused on servicing business clients across Australia and New Zealand. This meant that Lightwire then had two distinct business units, Lightwire Rural (operating in NZ only) and Lightwire Business (operating in AU and NZ).
Rural needed a NZ identity, Business needed a location neutral domain.
So, we ended up running with Lightwire.co.nz and Lightywirebusiness.com.
The problem we need to solve…
People within the company were allocated a .com address if they were predominantly business focused, and if not, they would be running with a .co.nz email address.
This started to make less and less sense as support, technical and accounts staff started to work across both customer bases. We also saw that customers weren’t sure which website to go to for business info.
In general, we were creating divides within the business and presenting Australian customers with NZ domains.
The solution
We needed a single service and location neutral domain.
Lightwire.com would have been perfect, but Cisco have owned that since the purchase of another Lightwire in 2012. Apparently the domain isn’t in use, but we had no luck getting them to sell it to us.
So, we opted for plan B – Lightwire.co
Everyone in Lightwire now has a .co domain (but old emails continue to work just fine) and we have a basic site at Lightwire.co that provides general company information and points visitors in the right direction based on their business or rural services requirements.
Now, after a lot of work and stress for our systems team, we have a unified digital identity that makes sense for our team and customers.
