# AskNicely

> AskNicely is an AI-powered customer experience platform built for multi-location service businesses. Founded in New Zealand in 2014 by Aaron Ward and John Ballinger and now headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it turns real-time customer feedback (NPS, CSAT, reviews) into daily action for frontline teams through surveys, analytics, reputation management, coaching tools, and its NiceAI generative AI agents. The company has raised roughly $53.7M, including a $32M Series B led by Five Elms Capital, and serves over 1,300 companies worldwide.

- **Founded:** 2014
- **Headquarters:** Portland, Oregon, United States
- **Founders:** Aaron Ward (Co-founder, former CEO, later Chief Strategy Officer and board member), John Ballinger (Co-founder (product/engineering))
- **Team size:** Roughly 100+ employees across offices in the United States, New Zealand and the Netherlands (approximate)
- **Products:** CX Surveys, Feedback Analytics, Frontline Success / Employee Activation, Reputation Management, Dynamic Surveys agent
- **Notable:** Raised approximately $53.7M across funding rounds, including a $32M Series B led by Five Elms Capital (2022), Serves over 1,300 companies worldwide, G2 Leader badges in Experience Management, including Mid-Market Leader

## Products & services

- **CX Surveys** — NPS, CSAT and dynamic AI-powered surveys delivered by email, SMS, web and kiosk at any point in the customer journey.
- **Feedback Analytics** — Real-time dashboards, trends and location-level insights for NPS and CSAT programs, viewable on mobile, TV dashboards and Slack.
- **Frontline Success / Employee Activation** — Leaderboards, recognition, coaching and gamification tools that put customer feedback in front of frontline workers.
- **Reputation Management** — Review request and approval workflows that route happy customers to public review sites like Google.
- **Dynamic Surveys agent** — First AI capability - surveys that adapt questions based on customer responses.
- **Ask NiceAI** — Generative AI layer for querying customer experience data conversationally and summarizing open-text feedback.
- **NiceAI Agents (Insights Agent, Response Agent)** — AI agents that proactively surface CX trends to Slack/Teams/email and draft on-brand replies to feedback and Google reviews.
- **Integrations** — Connections to 40+ CRMs and business tools including Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Front.

## Achievements

- Raised approximately $53.7M across funding rounds, including a $32M Series B led by Five Elms Capital (2022)
- Serves over 1,300 companies worldwide
- G2 Leader badges in Experience Management, including Mid-Market Leader
- Customer Cinch lifted its NPS from -13.7 to over 40 on the platform
- Moved headquarters from New Zealand to Portland, Oregon after its 2019 Series A

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Launched NiceAI Agents - Insights Agent and Response Agent - to automate customer insight summaries and draft review responses.
- **2025** — Released Ask NiceAI for conversational querying of CX data, plus deeper insights, focus areas, expanded reputation management and a new Transform Plan.
- **2025-04** — Tony Ward became CEO, succeeding earlier leadership; co-founder Aaron Ward remains involved at board level.
- **2024-10** — Launched first AI capability, the Dynamic Surveys agent.

## Links

- Website: https://www.asknicely.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asknicely/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/asknicely
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asknicelyapp

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/asknicely
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-05