DeRemi Atanda,the managing director and chief executive officer of Remita Payment Services Limited, has urged businesses and public institutions to prioritise customer experience in their digital transformation strategies, warning that technology investments may fail to deliver meaningful results if they do not address customers’ needs.
Atanda said organisations must measure the success of digital solutions by how effectively they improve service delivery, reduce customer effort and provide reliable outcomes, rather than by the sophistication of the technology deployed.
He made the call at the 2026 Service Excellence Conference in Lagos, where business executives, regulators and public sector leaders discussed ways to combine technology with human interaction to improve service delivery.
Speaking on the theme, “Tech-Enabled. Human-Powered,” Atanda observed that despite increased investments in digital platforms, automation and other technological innovations, customers continued to experience delays, uncertainty and avoidable difficulties when accessing services.
He argued that deploying new technologies without first understanding customer expectations could leave organisations with digital platforms that reproduce the same inefficiencies associated with traditional service delivery.
“Technology has been, and will continue to be, a means to an end, not the end itself. Customers are not looking for technology; they are looking for outcomes,” he said.
According to him, organisations must first identify what customers expect before selecting the technologies and processes needed to meet those expectations.
He added that effective digital transformation should make services easier to access, reduce the effort required to complete transactions and give customers greater certainty about the results.
Atanda also cautioned against measuring service excellence solely by the speed of transactions, noting that customers could complete processes quickly and still have poor experiences if the systems were confusing, unreliable or unable to provide assistance when problems arose.
“Speed is just one attribute of service delivery. Fast service is not always pleasant, nor does it always meet customer expectations. To deliver true service excellence, you must combine speed with smart solutions and human connection. That is what builds consistency and trust,” he said.
He maintained that businesses seeking to improve customer satisfaction must look beyond transaction speed and consider the overall experience, including the ease of navigating their platforms, the consistency of service and the availability of support when difficulties occur.
The Remita chief executive further stressed that digital transformation should not come at the expense of empathy and responsiveness, particularly as organisations increasingly automate customer interactions.
He explained that retaining the human element in digital services did not require businesses to return to manual processes but rather to ensure that customers felt understood and received appropriate support throughout their interactions with service providers.
“When we speak of human connection in technology, ‘human’ does not mean manual processes. It is about the emotional component of service delivery and how people relate to your brand,” he said.
Atanda added that technology should support more responsive and personalised services without creating a disconnect between organisations and the people they serve.
He also highlighted accountability as a critical factor in delivering reliable digital financial services, particularly in an ecosystem where transactions depend on multiple payment networks, service providers and intermediaries.
According to him, although several parties may be involved in processing a transaction, the organisation dealing directly with the customer must take responsibility for delivering on its service commitments.
He urged businesses to anticipate potential service disruptions and establish measures to address them before failures occur, rather than waiting for problems to emerge before developing solutions.
“You don’t prepare for war in the time of war; you prepare for war in the time of peace. Service providers must design for failure as seriously as they design for success,” he said.
“In a complex financial ecosystem, reliability is shared across multiple partners, but accountability is never shared. It is entirely yours to deliver on your promise to the customer.”
He called on business leaders and policymakers to establish clear service standards, strengthen accountability mechanisms and ensure that service failures attract appropriate consequences.
To help organisations translate these principles into practice, Atanda outlined five priorities for business leaders: understanding customer expectations before selecting technology, mapping the customer journey from beginning to end, incorporating empathy and responsiveness into service processes, preparing for potential failures and assessing performance based on actual customer experiences rather than system uptime alone.
The recommendations come as businesses and public institutions increasingly rely on digital platforms to deliver services, making reliability, accessibility and customer trust important considerations in their technology strategies.
Atanda’s remarks, delivered during the 2026 Customer Service Week, reinforced the need for organisations to evaluate digital investments based on the value they create for customers.
For Remita, he said, the focus remains on providing reliable and secure payment infrastructure for individuals, businesses and public institutions, while keeping customer experience central to service delivery.
