Steve Ashwood

Do you recognise any of these challenges?

"We need to retain more customers"

Customers decide to leave long before they tell you and most churn is determined in the first 90 days.

"I'm involved in every decision"

Growth gets capped by one person's availability.

"We're treating every account the same"

Your most valuable accounts are probably getting the least strategic attention.

"Customers aren't getting the value they signed up for"

The team followed the process. The customer's actual goal got lost somewhere along the way.

"Operational bottlenecks are slowing everything down"

The team is busy but the wrong things are absorbing the time.

"We need more new customers"

The growth revenue you're looking for is often already in your existing base.

The thread connecting all of those is the same. The operation was designed to respond, not to see ahead.

By the time the symptoms appear, the decision to leave, to disengage, to stop believing in the product, has usually already been made. The businesses that retain and grow don't move faster once problems surface. They build the operation so the signals are visible before the damage is done.

That requires going upstream and understanding what's actually driving the outcomes showing up in the numbers. Fixing the design before it becomes a retention crisis, a capacity problem, or a missed growth opportunity. That's where I start.

How I help

What your customers need to achieve

The single biggest driver of retention is how quickly a customer reaches their first meaningful outcome. Map what success looks like from their perspective, design the journey around getting them there fast, and build every touchpoint around achieving it.

Your best customers get your best attention

Match resource and delivery to customer value. Different customers get different delivery, management and resource, built around value, complexity and potential.

No more gaps between teams

Document the processes and fix the handoffs across the customer journey so customers don't fall through the gaps between teams.

Catch churn before customers decide to leave

Most churn is set in motion long before anyone flags it as a risk. Identify the signals early, intervene before the decision is made, surface the accounts ready to grow, and design lifecycles that keep customers achieving value, not just moving toward renewal.

Measure what matters

Define the metrics that matter, build the reporting around them, and turn data and insight into decisions.

Time spent on the right things

Free up the time spent on low-value, repetitive work and direct it to high-value customer focussed activity.

Measurable outcomes

From 15+ years leading customer and commercial operations inside a FTSE 100 enterprise and an established, PE-backed SaaS platform serving 11,000 customers globally.

90%

Client retention while expansion revenue grew at the same time

75%

Reduction in early implementation failure

120 hrs

Per week recovered from manual processes

23%

Average improvement in time to value across all customer segments

PE-backed SaaS Business · Onboarding & Implementation

When the answer isn't more headcount

The onboarding team was overwhelmed. We were pulling in staff from other markets to cover the load and the pressure was building to hire. Before doing that, I asked a simpler question: where is the team's time actually going?

A task-by-task analysis revealed that most of the effort was going on manual, low-value work that existed only because nobody had questioned it. Four automation improvements later, 120 hours per week were recovered and redirected to the work that actually mattered. The headcount request was never needed.

120 hrs/wk recovered 0 new hires

PE-backed SaaS Business · Customer Health

I built the system that told us who was about to leave

1 in 5 high-touch customers were churning early. Nobody could see why until it was too late, there was no way to see a customer disengaging before they'd already decided to leave.

I built a health scoring model drawing on CRM, product usage, finance and support data. Eight indicators tracked weekly, updated in 15 minutes, with a clear response for each and a cross-functional review built in. The team could see trouble coming and act before it became a retention crisis.

75% reduction in early churn 1 in 20 post-model vs 1 in 5 before

PE-backed SaaS Business · Segmentation & Delivery

When everyone gets the same, the most valuable get the least

The business needed to do better by its most valuable customers. At the same time, the team couldn't sustain the volume at a single tier. Both problems pointed to the same fix.

I designed and implemented a three-tier delivery model — low, medium and high touch. Getting it to stick was as much about the team as the process. Presented to the CEO, approved, and rolled out globally department by department.

CEO approved Global rollout 75% reduction in early implementation failure

FTSE 100 Enterprise · Customer Success

Turning around a customer base that had stopped believing in the product

Retention was in the low 80s. With a team of 7 managing over 400 customers across diverse sectors. Nobody had properly listened to what customers were experiencing and done something visible about it.

I started with a structured audit and direct conversations with a sample of the base. Categorised what I heard. Prioritised by commercial impact. Re-designed the engagement programme through a tiered structure to ensure customers received value. Within 12 months: retention moved from the low 80s to 90%. CSAT from 6.5 to 8.3. £1M expansion revenue from the same customer base.

90% retention £1M expansion CSAT 6.5 → 8.3 within 12 months

How we work together

A flexible way to engage, depending on what the business needs.

Not sure where to start?

Before you buy another dashboard or tool, know what you're putting it on top of. Discover where your operation is leaking revenue, capacity, or customer value in under 3 minutes.

Take the Free Health Check

Consulting Project

Fixed-scope engagement to deliver a specific solution.

If you know the area that needs fixing, we agree the scope and deliverables and get to work.

If something isn't right but you're not sure what's causing it, we start with a Value Leak Diagnostic. This maps where your operation is leaking commercial value, quantifies what it's worth fixing, and gives us a set of priorities to define the scope of work.

Fixed scope Defined outcome Clear timeline

Fractional Operations Leader

Embedded in your business as a senior leader, owning the outcomes and driving the function.

The businesses I work with come out the other side with faster time to value, stronger retention, more efficient operations, and a team that performs consistently. Proper governance sits underneath all of it: the reporting cadence, the decision-making structure, and the commercial accountability that keeps things on track.

Typically 1 to 3 days per week. No recruitment, no ramp-up, no full-time overhead.

6–12 months Embedded, part-time

Retained Advisory

An ongoing advisory partnership for companies with existing leadership that want outside perspectives, strategic challenge, and governance across customer retention, onboarding, and operational efficiency.

Typically a retained monthly engagement with regular structured conversations. Well suited to businesses where a fractional or consulting project has concluded and the relationship continues in a lighter form.

Ongoing Monthly retainer

Who do I work with?

Defined by situation, not sector. Any business with a customer operation.

The Founder-Led Business

Where the founder is still the operational glue.

The business runs through you. The work is about changing that.

The Growing Business

Where revenue is outpacing operational structure.

Revenue is moving faster than the operation that has to support it.

The Established Business at an Inflection Point

Where something has changed, or needs to.

Something has shifted: product, market, leadership and the operation needs to catch up.

Customer Operations Consultant

Steve Ashwood is a customer operations consultant with 15+ years leading customer and commercial operations inside a FTSE 100 enterprise and a scaling, PE-backed SaaS business. He's led customer operations at scale, built CS functions from scratch, and managed £4.5M ARR customer portfolios.

He left corporate to work at a different pace. Decisions land faster, impact is more visible, and there's less distance between the problem and the fix.

He works collaboratively, without ego, and with a genuine interest in the outcome rather than just the engagement. He'll push for progress, challenge thinking where it needs challenging, and stay focused on what actually moves the business forward.

Connect on LinkedIn

The post-sale operation built around early value. When your customers achieve more, you grow faster.