Organisations that rely increasingly on automation without maintaining accessible human support risk weakening customer trust, as consumers continue to place significant value on human interaction when resolving complaints and service challenges.
This was the central message in a Customer Service Week reflection by customer experience leader and Chief Brand and Marketing Officer/Head of Customer Experience at Union Bank of Nigeria, Olufunmilola ‘Funmie’ Aluko.
Aluko said organisations should view every employee who interacts directly with customers, including contact centre agents, receptionists, switchboard operators, security personnel and frontline public service workers, as part of their customer experience structure.
She argued that the first requirement for good service was not an elaborate gesture but the ability of customers to reach a knowledgeable person who would take ownership of their concerns and clearly explain the next steps.
The position comes as businesses across sectors expand their use of artificial intelligence and digital channels to manage customer interactions.
According to figures cited by Aluko from PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey, 86 per cent of consumers said human interaction was moderately or very important to their experience of a brand, while 52 per cent had stopped using or buying from a brand following a bad experience.
She also cited Gartner research involving more than 5,700 customers, which found that 64 per cent preferred companies not to use AI in customer service, with difficulty reaching a human being identified as the biggest concern.
Aluko said the growing use of technology should instead be used to remove routine tasks and give trained employees more capacity to handle complex, sensitive or urgent customer issues.
She said AI could improve service by providing faster access to information, enabling transactions without queues and giving agents access to a customer’s history, but warned that poorly designed automation could create barriers through endless menus, ineffective chatbots and inaccessible support channels.
She also called on organisations to reconsider how customer service performance is measured, arguing that the number of contacts avoided should not be treated as an indication of successful service if customers simply abandon their attempts to get help.
According to her, organisations should pay greater attention to first contact resolution, customer effort and whether customers would recommend the organisation after their issue has been addressed.
Aluko further identified investment in frontline employees as critical, particularly as organisations automate routine functions.
She said employees who deal directly with customers need the training, knowledge and authority to resolve problems rather than simply redirecting them to other departments.
She also urged organisations to use complaints as a source of business intelligence, saying frontline workers often identify recurring problems before they become visible through management reports.
Citing KPMG’s 2025 West Africa Banking Industry Customer Experience Survey, she noted that resolution remained the lowest rated of the six pillars of customer experience among Nigerian retail banking customers for the fifth consecutive year, with customers citing delays in resolving complaints and unclear communication.
She said the challenge extended beyond the banking sector to telecommunications, healthcare, aviation, government services and other organisations where customers depend on frontline employees to access services.
The issue is particularly significant in markets where customers interact with organisations through multiple channels, including USSD, WhatsApp, social media, physical offices and call centres.
Aluko said organisations needed to ensure consistency across these channels rather than treating digital platforms as substitutes for human support.
She also linked accessibility to customer security, particularly amid rising fraud and impersonation of trusted institutions.
Citing KPMG data, she said Nigerian financial institutions lost ₦52.26 billion to fraud in 2024, compared with ₦17.67 billion the previous year, while only about one third of customers felt very secure about how their digital transactions were handled.
She argued that having accessible and genuine human support could help customers distinguish legitimate communication from fraudulent activity.
Aluko also said customer protection regulations provided an important baseline for service delivery, but organisations needed to go beyond regulatory compliance by making timely resolution and accountability part of their operating culture.
She urged business leaders to assess their own customer service systems by experiencing them as customers, reading complaints in their original form, engaging frontline employees and giving staff greater authority to resolve issues.
According to her, the future of customer service is unlikely to be completely agentless, despite advances in AI, because customers will continue to require human intervention when dealing with complicated, sensitive or high consequence issues.
She said organisations that combine technology with well trained and empowered employees would be better positioned to build customer trust and loyalty in increasingly competitive markets.