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About

Twenty plus years of making technology and customers measurable.

I'm Dan Ahrens. I've spent my career in technology and working with customers. I've been a CSM, a leader of CSM teams, a product leader inside the platform vendor that defined the category, and for the last several years as the executive accountable for retention at global scale.

I've always been driven to make technology and customers measurable. For example, in 2012, at Kronos, our 32-person team was covering more than 1,200 customers with no CRM system or customer success platform to help. So I used the tools we had to build custom risk analytics and a simplified CRM - a decade before that kind of tooling became the standard. That builder mentality never left. Every role since has been some version of the same question: what do we actually know, how do we know it, and what is it worth?

What I do

I help B2B SaaS companies turn customer success into a function that runs on numbers: measurable health, deliberate coverage, and a team that acts on both. Sometimes that means building the function for the first time. Sometimes it means fixing one that stopped scaling or was focused on the wrong metrics. The tools are often the same; the sequence is repeatable.

In practice it's three things happening in sequence. 1) Assess and rebuild the measurement layer so the numbers mean something. 2) Redesign how coverage and engagement work so the team can act on those numbers. 3) Apply automation and AI so a smaller team covers more ground than it could before.

Dan Ahrens

How I learned

I have been fortunate to learn from some of the best in the business. I spent five and a half years at Gainsight, the company that created the customer success category, and had senior leadership roles at a number of other leading B2B SaaS companies.

Dan Ahrens backstage in the broadcast control area at the Gainsight Pulse conference
Backstage at Gainsight Pulse, the conference the customer success category grew up around.
01
The platform itself

Gainsight

Five and a half years inside the company that created the customer success category, progressing from customer facing roles in Customer Success to Product Management and finally Director of Product Operations. I built the strategic planning and operating cadence for product management and design. It is an unusual but useful vantage point: I know what these platforms are genuinely good at, and I know exactly where the marketing outruns the product.

02
Collaboration SaaS

Atlassian

I built the digital and SMB customer success functions from zero, scaling program reach roughly 100x through automation and engagement design. I also built the CS Operations team, deployed Gainsight in the first six months, and built a robust Gainsight system that gave leadership real-time visibility into customer health for the first time.

03
Cybersecurity SaaS

Forcepoint

I led a global Customer Success organization of 90 across customer success, onboarding, escalations, operations, and digital. I redesigned the function to deliver 42% greater customer coverage with no increase in headcount, deployed global health dashboards that drove a 149% increase in proactive customer engagement, and stood up a CS operations and digital team that more than doubled NPS response rates while improving the score itself more than 30 points.

04
Healthcare SaaS

HHAeXchange

A full CS functional transformation across a $100M ARR book of roughly 4,000 customers. I ran an organizational and operational assessment in the first 60 days, then executed a phased roadmap that lifted net revenue retention from about 103% to 112% in six months — roughly $9M in annual revenue impact. In parallel, I was the lead architect for a 70-seat Gainsight instance built from zero, deployed and productive within 60 days of kickoff.

From the people I've worked with

“Having started in customer success, he brought cross functional collaboration between Product and CS to new heights, and he never stopped bringing the customer’s view into the room.”

Maksim Ovsyannikov Former SVP of Product and Design, Gainsight

“Few leaders can both design the strategy and build the machinery to deliver it. Dan does both.”

Gertie Rizzo Former Global Head of Customer Success, Atlassian

“Dan transformed the function to reach customers before problems found us, without adding cost, all while keeping customers and the team steady through the change. He left Forcepoint in a much, much better state than when he arrived.”

Ryan Windham CEO, Forcepoint

“Dan led our CS transformation from the front. He was clear about where we needed to go, coached each of us on how to get there, and gave the team the structure around renewals discipline, executive business reviews, and strategic engagement that had been missing.”

Greg Hetelekidis Former VP of Customer Success, HHAeXchange

 

Why this matters

If you are running a twenty-person company or a 200 person company, here is why my experience at $100-$400M matters to you. I have seen what a retention system looks like when it is fully built, which means I know which pieces produce the result and which are window dressing.

I've also built systems from the ground up at various scales.

At Kronos, my team managed 1,200 customers. 32 CSMs and no CS platform, so we built the risk analytics ourselves. At Atlassian I built the digital and SMB motion from a blank page. I have done the scrappy version and the scaled version.

The value to you is knowing which one you need this fiscal year.

Dan Ahrens and three colleagues at a filmed session for the Gainsight Pulse conference, with a clapperboard and Pulse mugs on the table
Filming a thought leadership session for Gainsight.

On AI

I've been building and experimenting since the start of the Gen AI era.

I'm not creating slide decks that TALK about building (Claude is building my decks these days).
 
I'm CREATING actual working software.

I did my first AI coding project in December 2022. Since then I've built agents for all sorts of use cases like automating renewal pipeline reviews and customer risk prioritization, saving my teams 10–20% of their week and letting us run risk reviews far more often than we otherwise could. I have built custom web-based portfolio management software that surfaces workload imbalances, recommends account rebalancing, and gives leaders real-time visibility into team capacity and risk concentration.

I mention this because AI is on every consultancy's services page now, and I would rather show you what is running than describe it. Ask for a demo on the first call. The reason I can tell you where AI genuinely pays inside a CS organization, and where it does not, is that I have shipped it into one and watched a team either adopt it or quietly work around it.

Whether you need a simple proof of concept, a review of your current AI initiatives, or a complex, enterprise-grade solution, I have the experience to deliver.

How I work

  • Fixed scope, agreed upon price. You should know what you are buying before you commit. If a project needs to be bigger, I'll say so before we start, not in week three.
  • I'll tell you if I can't help. Some retention problems are product problems or pricing problems wearing a customer success costume. I'd rather say that on the first call.
  • The system has to survive me. A deliverable nobody can maintain after I leave is a very expensive PDF. Everything I build is meant to be operated by your team.
  • Candid, and on your side. You are paying for an outside view, so you will get it straight. You will also get it from someone who has sat in your chair and knows how a recommendation lands on a Monday morning Executive Leadership call.
  • You work with me. No junior team, no hand-off after the sale, no bench of analysts behind the curtain. The person who scopes the work does the work.

Credentials

  • A.S. Information Sciences & Technology, Penn State
  • B.S. Business & Information Technology Management, Western Governors University
  • Gainsight NXT Certified Administrator
  • Pragmatic Marketing Level II (PMC-II)
  • CompTIA Project+

Based in

  • Lewes, Delaware. Working with teams globally
The Welcome to Historic Lewes, Delaware lighthouse sign at the edge of town
Lewes, Delaware - the first town in the first state.

Track record

Where the numbers come from.

Dan Ahrens speaking to camera in a customer video filmed during his years at Kronos
Presenting during the Kronos years.
2025 – 2026
HHAeXchange
Senior Vice President, Customer Success

Full-scale CS transformation across a $100M ARR provider book spanning ~4,000 customers. Lifted NRR from ~103% to ~112% in six months. Architected and deployed a 70-seat Gainsight instance from scratch, productive across all teams within 60 days. Built AI agents for renewal forecasting and risk prioritization, plus custom Customer Success software tools.

2023 – 2025
Forcepoint
Vice President, Customer Success

Led a global team of 90 across customer success, onboarding, escalations, operations, and digital for a cybersecurity customer base. Redesigned the function for 42% greater coverage with no FTE increase. Deployed global health dashboards driving a 149% increase in proactive engagement. Doubled NPS response rates and moved NPS 30+ points.

2021 – 2023
Atlassian
Group Manager (Director Level), CS Operations & Digital

Led strategy and execution for Gainsight operations, SMB customer success, and digital campaigns. Built the digital and SMB CSM functions from the ground up, scaling program reach roughly 100x through automation and engagement design.

2016 – 2021
Gainsight
Director, Product Operations · Customer Success Director

Five and a half years inside the company that defined the customer success category, across three roles: CS Director, Product Manager, and Director of Product Operations. Built the strategic planning and operating cadence for product management and design, and directed quarterly release planning, beta programs, and product enablement.

2012 – 2016
Kronos
Manager, Customer Success

Led strategy and operations for a 32-person team managing 1,200+ customers across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB. Built custom risk analytics a decade before CS platforms made it standard, enabling proactive intervention at a scale the tooling of the day couldn't support.

Bring me your retention problem.

Thirty minutes, no deck. I'll tell you what I think is actually going on and whether I'm the right person to help.

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