In an industry traditionally seen as a laggard in digital adoption, Kennards Hire is proving that a ‘bricks-and-mortar’ foundation is no barrier to cutting-edge customer experience. Leading this charge is Nathan Borg, Head of Digital and Customer Experience. With a career spanning 15 years within the business, Nathan brings a unique perspective on how to blend physical reliability with digital innovation.
In this interview, CXFocus Editor, Mark Atterby, sits down with Nathan to discuss the ‘make your job easy’ philosophy, the reality of managing a 220+ branch network in 2026.
Mark Atterby (MA): To kick things off, could you give us a brief overview of your career journey and how you arrived at your current role?
Nathan Borg (NB): I’m the Head of Digital and Customer Experience at Kennards Hire. I’ve actually been working with the business for more than 15 years. I started in accounts payable before moving into IT support, then project management, where I spent about seven years delivering technology initiatives, this made up my first 10 years at Kennards Hire.
I then spent a couple of years at Football Australia managing digital projects that supported community sport nationally, before returning to Kennards Hire over five years ago to lead our digital and customer experience strategy as the Head of Digital and Customer Experience.
Today my remit is fairly broad. I lead our digital team and oversee our key digital marketing channels – including our website, search, paid media, and social, as well as our customer experience programs and voice-of-customer research. I work closely with the business to help shape our digital, martech and customer strategies across Australia and New Zealand.
A big part of my role is making sure the customer is represented in the decisions we make as a business, while delivering digital transformation programs, improving our platforms and data capabilities, and ultimately making the customer journey simpler and more effective.
MA: Could you describe the core vision of Kennards Hire and how that specifically translates into your strategy for the customer experience?
NB:
The construction industry is often seen as a laggard regarding technology which why it’s so important we understand the customer and market we operate in. Our customers are simply trying to get a job done, whether it’s renovating their bathroom or building major infrastructure, Kennards Hire is there to help our customers. Everything we do is organised around a single central promise – ‘make your job easy’. This isn’t just a motto; it’s culturally ingrained in our people. We focus on convenience for our customers, reliable and premium equipment and providing world class customer service. Tradies depend on us to get their jobs done and Tier 1 customers need us to be available 24/7. If our equipment isn’t there or isn’t reliable, we’re letting them down. We pride ourselves on being the core partner that ensures they can deliver for their customers.
This creates a deep level of trust; our customers know that if they simply turn up, we will have what they need.
Currently, our business has a mix of pre-booked and walk-in customers, reflecting the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of the construction industry. We recognise that tradies and contractors are juggling site management, business operations, and their own clients. Our goal is to simplify that complex customer journey by being the reliable constant in their day by providing convenience and certainty when they need it most.
MA: Kennards Hire is inherently a bricks-and-mortar, hands-on business. How do you bridge the gap between that tangible branch experience and your digital strategy to create a seamless journey for the customer?
NB: Our core strategy is centred on omnichannel flexibility, recognising the multichannel touchpoints our customers interact with. We don’t force customers toward a specific channel; instead, we empower them to engage with us however they choose. We know that the website is a critical touchpoint, with customers visiting us online before ever setting foot in a branch. They use our website for research, checking availability and locating the right gear but often prefer the physical branch for the final booking (albeit that option is also available on the phone, online and on web chat). It’s a perfectly integrated journey where the digital and physical worlds aren’t competing but rather intertwining to support the customer’s decision-making process.
At Kennards Hire, we view the customer journey in three distinct phases – decision, utility, and return. Our digital strategy is designed to add value at every one of those touchpoints.
- Pre-hire (the decision): Our website serves as a high-performance lead generator, providing the advice, technical specs, pricing and availability needed to drive a hire decision.
- In-hire (the utility): The experience doesn’t end when the customer leaves the branch. We’ve integrated QR codes on all equipment that link to our ‘plant portal.’This gives customers instant access to how to guides, compliance documents and service histories. To further empower them, we are developing ‘just-in-time’ educational content like 30-second reels on how to change sandpaper on a floor sander to ensure they feel confident using our equipment.
- Post-hire (the return): We prioritise a frictionless return and billing process. To maintain our high standards, we utilise a sophisticated Voice of Customer (VoC) program. The results speak for themselves: we maintain a consistent 9.4/10 satisfaction score across our entire 220+ branch network, proving that our focus on reliability and convenience truly resonates.
MA: Many companies are currently trialing AI to handle high-volume, standard customer inquiries. Is Kennards Hire looking at a similar strategy to leverage AI in your contact centres or digital channels?
NB: We aren’t deploying customer-facing AI for voice or chat just yet. In our industry, customers call because they need a reliable answer immediately. Given the high variability of our business – emergency response, late returns, and service schedules – human judgment is still our greatest asset for ensuring certainty for our customers.
Instead, our AI focus is internal. We view AI as an assistant for our frontline teams. By using AI to optimise operations and provide our team with faster, more accurate access to data, we find efficiencies that actually free up more time for them to spend with the customer. For us, the brand is still represented best by our people – AI simply helps them perform at their peak.
MA: Looking at where we are now in 2026, what does success’ look like for the Kennards Hire customer experience?
NB: In 2026, the customer journey is no longer a linear path we can fully control through traditional creative. While TV and radio build awareness, and social media builds trust, AI models like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT have introduced a new lens for brand discovery. These models don’t care about your high-budget creative; they care about your credibility.
The biggest challenge today is that AI evaluates a brand based on several metrics, specifically Google’s AI overview uses ‘E-E-A-T’ (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) to help derive results in their algorithm. It looks past our marketing and analyses what customers are actually saying. If AI perceives a pattern of poor experiences, it won’t just report it – it will actively recommend a competitor. Consequently, trustworthiness is about what others say about you, it’s reviews and how other trusted channels talk about your brand.
For Kennards Hire, success is to continue to provide customers with great service and a seamless customer experience. We’re very much focused on how we can continue to make our customers jobs easy, and we know that will prove itself over the coming year.
MA: What is your number one piece of advice for marketing and CX professionals to future-proof their careers? What skills or tools should they be prioritising right now to stay ahead of these challenges?
NB: AI is fundamentally changing the physics of how teams work and marketing professionals need to become AI natives. It has collapsed the ‘idea-to-brief’ lifecycle from weeks to minutes, allowing us to research, analyse data, and synthesise thoughts at light speed. However, this acceleration brings a new challenge – the strategic bottleneck.
When a team of ten can suddenly produce content and strategies much faster than before, the burden shifts to leaders to regulate that flow. The skill of the future isn’t just about prompting AI; it’s about curation and strategic oversight. We have to teach our teams to embrace AI, understand its limitations and harness its potential. We also need to ensure that our AI accelerated ideas still align with the broader business plan. Success in 2026 isn’t defined by how much we can produce, but by our ability to filter a surplus of ideas into high-impact execution.
Nathan spoke at The 18th CMO Summit 2026, an event by Marcus Evans, held February 25–26, 2026, at the InterContinental Sydney Double Bay, The next CMO Summit will be held in July https://www.marcusevans.com/summit/cmoanz/jul26.