VeroTerra – Solving the Customer Churn Problem for SMBs with their Patented Real Time Ethical AI Technology that Detects Customer Satisfaction
Ray Ragan
Co-
VeroTerra
Contact:
Ray K. Ragan
703-
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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/veroterra
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFO Magazine
Published – November 17, 2025
CEOCFO: Mr. Ragan, what is the concept behind VeroTerra?
Mr. Ragan: The focus is getting after customer churn. We know that every year, small and medium businesses in America on average are losing 15-
In this age of distraction, it is very difficult to get a survey result from a customer. Consequently what businesses are seeing is that they think their customers are happy right up until they churn. When I say churn, it means that they are actually leaving. That is what VeroTerra is going after.
CEOCFO: Are you surprised that most companies don’t know what they are doing wrong?
Mr. Ragan: I think it comes down to this concept of a distraction in the economy. We are all battling for the attention of our consumers. It is difficult to get our consumers to give us candid feedback that we can take action on. That is why with VeroTerra, we have started looking at not only what our customers are telling us, but what they are actually revealing with their behavior.
AI has opened up a whole new toolbox to us, and VeroTerra was fortunate enough to get a patent on using real time ethical AI to detect customer satisfaction. This part of our platform has allowed us to go after this meaty problem of customer churn.
CEOCFO: How does the plan work?
Mr. Ragan: As it stands right now, we have a couple different products in our overall platform. The platform is called Amplify. What this platform does is it pulls in traditional net promoter score along with our patented technology, to get real time ethical AI customer satisfaction data. We pair that together along with a product I am calling Magic Insights, where we are pulling all this information together and pulling it into actionable lists that a company can take and make meaningful changes to their customer experience that actually improves the customer experience, so businesses aren’t shooting in the dark. The idea here is those bigger insights that move the needle and that is what we are after at VeroTerra, in cooperation and partnership with the businesses that are our customers.
CEOCFO: Would you give us an example, step by step?
Mr. Ragan: As it stands now, most companies are asking their customers whether or not the customer would recommend that company to a family or friend. From that we can calculate a net promoter score. For the last twenty years, net promoter scores have been the gold standard of predicting customer loyalty. We have this data, we have this practice, and it is well understood throughout industry. We have taken our patented ethical AI technology to get closer to the truth of what customers are feeling. We can use that to calibrate. What that does is now we are starting to compare between what a customer is volunteering as far as the information, against what they are actually revealing as far as behavior. In that delta, is where the truth lies.
With our Magic Insights platform, we are pulling in some additional information. What data we pull in depends on the nature of the business, and from that we can make specific recommendations in what the business is offering, both in product and service. That will have a meaningful impact in reducing their overall customer churn. That is how it all works. We are taking multiple sources of data and pulling it into a couple of standard models that we use or improving the customer experience. We are making specific recommendations on how the business can improve the customer experience to prevent that customer churn.
CEOCFO: What might you pick up in a physical location?
Mr. Ragan: With our Mirror which is our patented technology, we are ethically interacting with the customer through AI and computer vision. Ethical is important here because there certainly is AI technology out there that will face-
The real key here is getting real-
CEOCFO: What has been the reaction from customers that are coming upon your system and giving thumbs up and thumbs down?
Mr. Ragan: I have had the opportunity to see this in practice for all ages. It is so magical when people realize that this technology is actually on and reacting to that person. I have seen it with three-
From the times I have been in those locations and actually talked to the customers, I can say this is the only ethical AI solution on the market. We are not collecting any additional information. We are not doing face-
CEOCFO: After you provide that data to the store managers is there training for them as to how to react to what they are seeing and how to engage with the customer?
Mr. Ragan: I have found that we are all drowning in data. What people seem to value, and we do this at VeroTerra, is to give a list of actions to improve the customer experience. Obviously if someone gives you a thumbs down because a clerk was rude to them, that is more of an on-
It is not always cost; it is usually friction, so that is really what we are digging in on, that friction side of the customer experience. That is the reason why we are providing an action list and if a company or business wants to follow those actions, then great. However, if they just want to look at the data and make their own decisions, they are welcome to do that too. The data is available and we give them that prescriptive list of actions that will improve the overall customer experience.
CEOCFO: What are your target industries?
Mr. Ragan: I grew up in the financial institution space, specifically credit unions. I developed the technology to solve a credit union problem, which is figuring out why our credit union members were leaving. That is where we are going to market initially, with the financial institutions, credit unions and community banks. This has applications in quick-
CEOCFO: Are you looking at online retail?
Mr. Ragan: The vision we have for the digital space is very similar to what we have in the physical space and that is how to get real-
CEOCFO: Where are you today in making the world better with your technology?
Mr. Ragan: We are very early on. We are pre-
CEOCFO: What have you learned about presenting to the investment community to get your point across?
Mr. Ragan: I am an old army guy. As old army guys like to joke about the stupid stuff that our drill sergeants used to say, I’ve now started it with venture capital. It has been interesting hearing the feedback from venture capital just because I have talked to, I admire the ones that are very clear in what they invest in, that’s the clarity of vision that’s important. Then you bump into some that fit that stupid stuff drill sergeants say and let’s say it’s been worth a chuckle. I will note that venture capital as of late has been a lot more cautious and careful, which is driven by the uncertainty of the market, which is why we’re addressing a hair-
CEOCFO: What have you learned from your military experience that has helped in business?
Mr. Ragan: It is strange because on the civilian side I got exposure to data science. Because of that data science exposure, in the military I was assigned to AI projects early on in AI’s current golden age. What that has allowed me to do is get elbows deep with some of this AI technology as it is coming straight out of academia and start bringing that back into the civilian world now. It is the interesting cycle dynamic between both the military and the civilian communities.
I am an army reserve officer, so I have a civilian job, but I also have a military job. That has allowed me to bring practices from the civilian side over to the military and back. What I am bringing back from the military now is the exposure to these AI technologies that are only now starting to become more commonplace and ubiquitous. Those that position themselves with AI intellectual property now will have unfair advantages in the future, which makes our patent so important.
CEOCFO: What surprised you as you implemented your product for customers?
Mr. Ragan: The biggest surprise is when I talk to business owners; frequently I would here “oh, our NPS scores are great.” Then I would ask them about customer churn, and they would say “oh, we are churning, we are sitting at 30%.” This really brings up that paradox of if your net promoter score is excellent, why are people churning? The theory behind net promoter score is that these are people that are advocating for your business when you need them to be advocating for your business because a personal recommendation from a trusted person is worth more than anything marketing can do.
It has been this strange paradox of hearing literally 80% of the businesses I talk to say they have great NPS but then when you ask them about churn, they admit they have a churn problem. There is something wrong there and that is why I keep coming back to this attention economy that we are in. It is a little naïve for a business to assume that a customer is actually going to respond to an email asking for feedback. So the question is how do we instrument and get that feedback in an ethical way that is instructive and informative as this gold standard of customer loyalty, which is NPS.
CEOCFO: What does 2026 look like for VeroTerra?
Mr. Ragan: 2026 is busy. We are coming out of this Mid Atlantic Capital Conference, really strong. The customer pipeline is healthy. I am projecting six implementations just in the first half of 2026. That is the cool thing about data, it has network effects, so as we continue to bring on more customers and enrich our data set, that will allow us to keep making these insights on how to reduce customer churn, even more.
I keep talking about the AI toolbox and it has opened up so many tools for us already with what we have patented. The advent of agentic AI, literally in the last six months has opened up a whole new array of tools to us. We are still discovering the true potential and return on investment that those tools actually give us. I am super excited and optimistic about 2026.
CEOCFO: With so many new concepts today, why should VeroTerra be one of the companies that businesses and investors consider?
Mr. Ragan: We are the only startup that is specifically going after the customer churn problem, with patented IP as the market shares are getting established in this new AI economy. The other thing is our leadership team is absolutely topnotch. You have heard about my military background, I also served as a C Level officer for the last six years and even served a year as an interim CEO for a credit union. My founding team is equally as solid.
I have Christine Loredo, who was an executive in a Fintech that went all the way from IPO to acquisition. I have Jeff Rosenberg, who is a pioneer in robotics and AI. With that quality of a founding team, it just gives those investors such an intangible advantage, coupled with this brand-