New Zealand's AskNicely raises $32m Series B
Five Elms Capital, a specialist growth investor in software start-ups globally, has led a USD 32m Series B round for New Zealand and US-based customer feedback platform AskNicely.
Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners – a prolific investor in software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses along the India-US axis – and Australia’s Blackbird Ventures also participated. Nexus led a USD 10m Series A for the company in 2019, supported by Blackbird and K1W1, an early-stage investor established by Stephen Tindall, founder of New Zealand retailer The Warehouse Group.
Founded in 2014 by New Zealander Aaron Ward, AskNicely claims to connect the dots between employee experience, customer experience, and revenue growth for service businesses. It brings together net promoter scores, workflow information and customer feedback, turning data into insights – and personalised coaching – for frontline workers.
AskNicely serves more than 1,300 companies out of offices in New Zealand, the US, and the Netherlands. There are plans to double headcount.
“Traditional customer experience software solutions do an okay job keeping analysts busy with mountains of data, but they totally ignore the actual people responsible for serving the customer. It’s kind of outrageous that the class of worker that’s most impactful on the customer experience is also the most under-served, underpaid, and under-appreciated,” Ward said in a statement.
AskNicely is positioned to address the needs of the frontline worker and eliminate layers of supervision and management that traditionally exist in between. Ward took inspiration from the likes of Uber and Airbnb, which have gamified the customer feedback delivery process with a view to unlocking small daily improvements from staff.
“Any service business can now empower every frontline worker with the same capability in a simple mobile app at a fraction of the cost,” Ward said, adding that clients have reported significant improvements in NPS while saving on marketing costs because they are getting more repeat purchases and referrals.
Software start-ups in Australia and New Zealand that address global customer bases are attracting increasing investor interest. New Zealand has seen several exits of note in the past 12 months, with engineering software provider Seequent and retail software specialist Vend sold to North American strategics for USD 1bn and USD 350m, respectively. Both companies had VC backers.
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