Auckland, New Zealand – AskNicely, the frontline success platform that provides customer experience software to service businesses, has announced that it has raised US$32m in a Series B funding round led by growth investor firm Five Elms Capital, which will be used in empowering frontline teams.

AskNicely, which has a presence in New Zealand, the US, and the Netherlands, has an industry-leading mobile platform that delivers personalized coaching and motivation for frontline workers powered by real-time customer feedback and eliminates the need for layers of middle management.

Through the new funding, AskNicely will be launching the world’s first Frontline Success Platform, which aims to bring better technology to frontline teams. It takes inspiration from people-powered businesses that have invested in technology to coach and motivate millions of frontline workers with no requirement for supervision or layers of traditional management. 

Aaron Ward, the CEO of AskNicely, shared that brands like Uber and Airbnb have proven how customer feedback can be gamified for customer-facing staff to unlock small daily improvements which, over time, drive status and rewards with concepts like ‘Superhost’ or ‘Uber Platinum Pro’. 

“For the first time, any service business can now empower every frontline worker with the same capability in a simple mobile app at a fraction of the cost,” explains Ward.

As part of the funding, Ryan Mandl, Five Elms Capital’s managing director, will also be joining the AskNicely board. 

Mandl commented, “Given that frontline workers make up 80% of the planet’s working population, we see an enormous market opportunity for AskNicely’s Frontline Success Platform, and are excited to partner with Aaron and the AskNicely team to continue to develop innovative products for their fast-growing, global customer base.”