Broadband7.10.2020

We will not rest until we are number 1 – Afrihost CEO

Afrihost CEO Gian Visser

MyBroadband’s Q3 2020 broadband and ISP report revealed that Afrihost climbed to second place behind Cool Ideas in the latest ISP rankings.

What is striking about Afrihost’s latest position is that the company was ranked tenth in the middle of last year.

Afrihost won MyBroadband’s ISP of the Year award in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, which showed it was a firm favourite among consumers.

This change after MTN bought a controlling stake in Afrihost in 2014, with service levels starting to slide and product development grinding to a halt.

Afrihost’s directors bought the company back from MTN in 2016 to give them more control, but they still struggled to catch up with their competitors.

Things started to change in mid-2019 when Afrihost launched its Pure Fibre service. It was ranked tenth at the time.

Over the next year, its ranking steadily improved – first to seventh place in Q3 2019, then fight in Q4 2019, and fourth in Q1 2020.

In Q2 2020, Afrihost moved to fourth place, and in the third quarter the ISP was ranked second.

The chart below shows Afrihost’s ISP ranking over the past two years.

How Afrihost achieved this improvement

Afrihost’s most recent ranking is its best performance in years, which raises the question of what is behind its improvement.

Afrihost CEO Gian Visser told MyBroadband they focussed on many different things related to customer experience.

This includes their team, their network, their support channels, the Afrihost app, and their backend systems.

“If I had to break it down to one key thing, it is our relentless focus on what our clients want and to make sure our core product as good as possible,” Visser said.

He added that some of their interventions make a difference in obvious ways, like their Pure Fibre product.

“If we make sure our Pure Fibre is everything we say it is – simple, uncapped and works at the speed the client is paying for – then everything else falls into place,” he said.

“Make no mistake: To get this right is a huge challenge especially as you continue to grow. And we still are nowhere near where we want to be and where we are aiming to be,” he said.

While the latest report shows that Afrihost is near the top of the ISP rankings, Visser said they will always strive to improve.

“I’m very happy that we are at number 2 in the ISP rankings, but we will not rest until we are number 1 again,” he said.

Now read: South African ISP rankings – Good news for Cool Ideas and Afrihost, but bad news for Rain

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