Fondly called ‘The Service Master” and “Chief Customer Advocate”, our woman crush Christiana Okenla is a customer experience and digital transformation expert with 20 years’ experience leading enterprise-wide customer initiatives in the banking, information technology, and telecommunications sectors.
Christiana has worked in all aspects of customer experience, including customer service, contact centre operations, business process outsourcing, as well as experience and relationship management at NIIT Education & Training Center, Econet Wireless now Airtel Nigeria, Tech Mahindra, United Bank for Africa (UBA), ipNX and MainOne – an Equinix company. She has also trained notable organisations and bodies such as House of Tara, PiggyVest, Blackstone Capital, West Africa Association of Customer Service Professionals (WAACSP), and Institute of Strategic Customer Service & Trade Management (ICSTM). She is also an event management expert and has successfully staged events such as the UBA CEO Awards.
At Tech Mahindra, Christiana was a three-time Best Manager award recipient. She was part of the team that set up the social media desk at UBA, and hosted Facebook Lives to cover the bank’s product and service offerings. She received a Letter of Commendation from the bank for, as well as a Customer Fulfillment Center Award of Excellence in recognition of her exemplary pursuit of customer satisfaction. At ipNX, she was an Assistant General Manager and Head, Customer Experience and Advocacy, where she implemented its global strategy in providing customer journeys across all products, services, and touchpoints in its retail division. She currently works at MainOne – as Deputy General Manager and Head, Customer Experience. Here, she is in charge of driving the company’s customer experience strategies to deliver customer satisfaction and maximize market penetration, among other targets.
In 2021, she received the Volunteer of the Year Award given by Institute of information Management (IIM), Africa. She is also nominated for a Certificate of Recognition as Customer Success Champion of the Year by SalesRuby Limited, and was also ranked among the Top 50 Personalities on LinkedIn by the company in 2020. She also received the Chartered Fellow – International Award (CF-i) from the Chartered Institute of Strategic Management and Leaders in 2017, recognizing her leadership in the area of customer satisfaction.
Christiana is a Fellow of the Institute of Information Management (FIIM), Institute of Strategic Customer Service and Trade Management (FCSTM), Customer Service Institute of America, and West Africa Association of Customer Service Professionals (FWAACSP), and is a member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Lagos Local Network. In June 2022, she was certified as a Chartered Management Consultant by the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants Canada/USA.
Christiana is also dedicated to public service. Christiana is a Rotarian, and currently on the board of the Rotary Club of Lekki Golden, District 9110 and serves as the Imagine Rotary Treasurer of the club. At the Club, she is a Paul Harris Fellow and has been involved in campaigns for improved maternal and child health, tree planting and polio eradication. She is also champions a give back series – GGG Gives Back Outreach – through which she helps feed the less privileged in her community.
Given her expertise in the field, she has been called upon to speak at several events such as the 2019 Experiential Design Summit; CX Transformation Summit in 2019 and 2020; 2021 Customer Focused Company Annual Summit; and 2022 Reimagining Customer Service Experience. She was a mentor under the GapX Career Mentoring Programme from October 2021 to January 2022.
“Customer experience is a lifestyle. You need to live it to know it” is what Christiana lives by, and for her transformational leadership that values the everyday consumer, we celebrate Christiana Okenla as the ultimate woman crush.