Corporate & commercial banking
Relationship-led service for corporate clients, from onboarding through to renewal and retention.
Transform. Transcend. Become.
About Adesua Oriaifo
Customer Experience & Client Success Leader, Coach, and Facilitator. Meaningful growth, without losing yourself.
Introduction
A practice built on service
I am a customer experience and customer success leader with over seven years across customer success, corporate banking and total quality management. I design and implement customer journey frameworks, strengthen the experience customers actually have, and drive the process improvements behind it.
I work across functions so that what a brand promises and what a customer feels stay aligned — improving satisfaction, loyalty and retention, and coaching the teams who deliver it every day.
Meaningful growth, without losing yourself.
Lead with Care.
The method
How the work actually runs
Four stages, in this order, every time — because a fix that skips the listening stage is just a guess with a deck attached.
- 01
Listen first
Voice-of-customer research, frontline interviews and a read of the data before a single recommendation is made.
- 02
Map the journey
The real path a customer takes — every handoff, wait and rework — drawn out so the gaps stop being invisible.
- 03
Fix the system
Process, messaging and operating rhythm changed together, so the improvement holds after the project ends.
- 04
Prove it moved
CSAT, NPS, effort and resolution time tracked against a baseline, reported plainly to the people who own it.
Experience
Seven years of customer experience, in the work itself
From frontline support to leading customer success — the roles, the numbers and the changes that came out of them.
Sterling Bank
July 2023 — Present
Head, Customer Success
July 2023 — Present
Nigeria
Leads customer success for the corporate segment — process documentation, journey design and the operating rhythm of the support team.
- Created documentation for all key processes for internal alignment and strengthened team effectiveness; led customer engagements based on data insights that produced a 6% increase in revenue.
- Designed and implemented a defined customer journey for corporate customers, plus an engagement framework addressing gaps around inactive, dormant and unfunded accounts.
- Implemented systems to improve the productivity and capacity of the customer support team across the corporate customer lifecycle, and proactively deployed a 24/7 email team that improved turnaround on complaints and enquiries.
- Ran regular communication training for customer-facing staff and developed pre-approved messaging templates for notifications and holding responses.
- Introduced monthly one-to-one check-ins and performance reviews, and set minimum daily and monthly targets that materially improved team productivity.
Awarded “Most Improved Team”, 2023
Access Bank Plc
6 years 10 months
Customer Journey Manager, Corporate Banking
August 2020 — July 2023
Lagos State, Nigeria
Owned the end-to-end corporate customer journey, working across functions to design and implement solutions that improved experience, loyalty and retention.
- Delivered a 33% improvement in customer satisfaction, exceeding the 85% CSAT target on the corporate banking platform — from 53% in December 2020, to 83% in December 2021, to 86% in June 2022.
- Championed the customer feedback channel and redesigned the payment processing flow, improving issue resolution time by 55% and lifting the Customer Effort score from 79% in December 2021 to 83% in June 2022.
- Tracked customer experience metrics and implemented solutions that improved Net Promoter Score by 28 points — from 9 in June 2021, to 28 in December 2021, to 37 in June 2022.
- Facilitated customer service and relationship management training for the Sales and Marketing teams.
Customer Experience Analyst, Total Quality Management
September 2018 — August 2020
Lagos, Nigeria
Turned voice-of-customer research and service quality assessment into process improvements across the corporate segment.
- Conducted voice-of-customer satisfaction surveys, service quality assessments and user experience reviews that identified pain points and led to significant process improvements.
- Championed initiatives that improved the bank's corporate segment ranking in the annual KPMG Banking Industry Customer Experience Survey — from 9th in 2018 to 5th in 2019.
- Supervised the launch of the monthly Corporate Customer Newsletter, providing proactive communication on products, services, market trends and policy updates.
- Planned and executed the maiden virtual Corporate Customer Forum, addressing key pain points during the initial COVID-19 lockdown.
- Developed a Rates Guide covering all bank charges, resolving recurring complaints about unclear charges.
Customer Support and Operations Officer
October 2016 — September 2018
Nigeria
Frontline service delivery and branch operations, with a focus on first-contact resolution and staff capability.
- Ensured first-contact resolution across requests, enquiries and complaints — resolving a minimum of 120 customer tickets daily within SLA.
- Compiled team and customer reports and balanced all general ledgers daily, contributing to a “Satisfactory” rating in the biannual bank-wide audit.
- Identified patterns in user frustration and ran weekly staff training on those areas, leading to the branch being recognised as outstanding in the region.
- Onboarded customers onto the mobile application, driving a 70% increase in sign-up rate.
Where I have worked
The sectors behind the practice
Seven years of customer experience across banking, operations and frontline service — the same problems wearing different uniforms.
Retail & digital banking
Payment flows, complaint handling and the everyday experience of customers on digital channels.
Financial services operations
Total quality management, service standards and the audit trail behind a consistent experience.
Customer support teams
Capacity, targets, 24/7 coverage and the coaching rhythm that keeps a frontline team steady.
Voice of the customer
Feedback channels, survey design and turning what customers say into a prioritised backlog.
Learning & facilitation
Workshops and training for sales, marketing and service teams, built around their real scenarios.
Background
Where it was built
The qualifications, certifications and languages behind the practice — and the skills that show up in the work every week.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
University of the People
2019 — 2021
Education
Banking Excellence Programme
Access Bank School of Banking Excellence
2018 — 2019
Education
Bachelor's degree, Microbiology
Obafemi Awolowo University
2010 — 2015
Certification
Customer Experience Specialist (CXS)
Certification
ACIB
Certification
Coaching Masteries Practitioner
Certification
Product Management
Certification
Certified Contact Center Manager (CCCM)®
Languages
- English — Native or bilingual
- French — Elementary
Skills in practice
Strategy ImplementationPresentationsKey Metrics
Collaboration
How I can help
Coaching, facilitation and advisory work for leaders and teams building better customer and client experiences.
Customer experience
Strategy, journey mapping and service design that connect what customers feel to how the business operates.
Client success
Operating models and renewal motions that make retention a managed outcome, not a hopeful one.
Coaching
One-to-one and group coaching for leaders navigating growth, transition, or a step up in scope.
Facilitation
Workshops and offsites designed to move a group from alignment to action — with clear outputs.
Advisory
Short, focused engagements to diagnose a problem, design a fix, and support implementation.
Capability building
Practical training for frontline and leadership teams, grounded in real scenarios.
In their words
What colleagues and clients say
The people I have led, worked alongside and served — in their own words.
“Adesua Oriaifo is an exceptional leader who has elevated our team to new heights. Her strategic vision, expertise, and passion for delivering outstanding customer experiences have been truly invaluable. As a visionary leader, Adesua embodies a customer-centric approach that I've had the privilege to learn from. Her strategic problem-solving skills and ability to empower team members have fostered a culture of excellence, yielding consistent delivery of exceptional results.”
Lateef Hassan
Customer Experience
Worked on the same team
Recommendation 1 of 7, from Lateef Hassan: Adesua Oriaifo is an exceptional leader who has elevated our team to new heights. Her strategic vision, expertise, and passion for delivering outstanding customer experiences have been truly invaluable. As a visionary leader, Adesua embodies a customer-centric approach that I've had the privilege to learn from. Her strategic problem-solving skills and ability to empower team members have fostered a culture of excellence, yielding consistent delivery of exceptional results.
Ready to work together?
If you are exploring a coaching engagement, a workshop, or a consulting project, I would be glad to hear what you are working on.