E-Business
Poor Customer Service, bane of Corporate Nigeria – Onuegbu
Poor customer service, lack of understanding of the role customer appreciation plays in company growth have been identified as bane of Nigeria’s service delivery, and subsequently, major killer sof many promising companies in Nigeria.
Collins Onuegbu, managing director and chief executive of Signal Alliance Ltd, an end-to-end IT firm which specializes in systems integration noted that “poor customer service delivery” was prevalent in Nigeria. He affirmed that effective customer service delivery was a panacea to redundancy.
“Most critically, over the years we have also discovered at Signal Alliance that effective and efficient customer service plays key role in client loyalty and the attendant growth experience,” said Onuegbu.
Proffering what he called the Signal Alliance philosophy of corporate-customer relationship at the end of a week-long ‘Customer Week’ programme in Lagos, Onuegbu said: “Mutual respect is required in effective customer service delivery. You ask yourself; what is our definition of company-customer/partner relation? “
Differing from widely held views that in the business environment, it is all for profit and less concern about partner-end-relationship, Onuegbu, a systems integration specialist noted that companies are said to have performed well when their profits margins could be measured with commensurate growth of their dealing partners.
“When company A reports growth in profit margin, it is expected that its associate partners/customers should have similar experiences. But if company A is growing while its partners/customers in the business ecosystem are experiencing downturn, it definitely will pose a big challenge within the ecosystem,” said Onuegbu.
Concurring, Emeka Osuocha, head of IT operations at BGL Plc, a leading investment banker which offers financial advisory, corporate finance and private banking/asset management services to a network of clients said although customer service may not ring loud in the corporate corridors, it is a key driver of growth.
“There has to be an understanding that the customer pays the bill for the company and should therefore be treated as ‘king’. If we must relate to the old axiom that ‘customer-is-king’ then, they should be so treated and in doing so, the company experiences goodwill and subsequent growth in profit margin,” said Osuocha.
He highlighted that part of the challenge companies’ face in effective customer service delivery was trust. “There has to be trust, but when there is a lack of trust, it would really be very difficult in delivering effective customer service.”
Onuegbu added that “there is a general lack of trust among Nigerians. Nigeria is a society that does not trust. We don’t trust ourselves enough to want to open books to clients/partners to have an understanding of our corporate operations. It could pose business risk. Agreed, in some of the advanced economies you could have more trusting business relationship; but in general terms, not only in Nigeria, but in the emerging economic environment, that trust isn’t available.”
Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.
The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.
In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.
Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.
Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.
The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.
“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.
It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.
Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.
Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.
A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.
“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.
Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.
Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.
It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.
Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued a public warning that it is not associated with NINcard.com.
According to the commission, the website has been circulating online to offer services for Nigerians seeking National Identification Number (NIN) services.
NIMC, in a post on its official X account on Wednesday, said, “NINcard.com is not in anyway affiliated to NIMC. Stay vigilant!”
The warning was accompanied by screenshots of fake payment receipts and OTP request pages from the website, both of which were boldly stamped “FAKE” by NIMC to alert the public.
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