Customer Success · Operations
If your system breaks for the person with the highest stakes and the least patience for confusion; it was always broken. I find where that happens, and fix it upstream.
About
"The surface is rarely the whole story."
I started in Geology, trained to read beneath the surface for the forces shaping what's visible. Field work at an oil and gas operation (Addax Petroleum) and on a manufacturing plant floor (Vitafoam) taught me that the fault, the fracture, the failure is almost never where it appears. It's upstream. Buried in the system.
I've spent five years applying that discipline to customer operations. As a CS Team Lead for a global ride-hailing platform serving 45+ countries, I've managed outsourced teams of up to 42 specialists in one of the most demanding two-sided CS environments in SaaS, where riders and drivers are entirely different customers operating within a single framework.
The phrase I hold every system I build to: "Explain it like I'm 5." Not as a communication tip. As an engineering standard. A system that only works for a confident, patient, technically fluent user isn't a good system. The right design target is always the person with the most at stake and the least margin for confusion.
The gap between product capability and user-experience is typically widest and that gap is exactly where I work.
Case Studies
Friction Analysis · Process Redesign
The Problem
Customers were contacting support multiple times about the same issues. The assumption was a training gap: agents weren't explaining things clearly enough. But more coaching wasn't moving the number. The problem wasn't the people. It was the system they were working inside.
Standard volume reporting told us how many contacts were coming in, not why the same customers kept returning. The real cause was invisible in aggregate data.
The Approach
I built a systematic analysis of support conversations across the team; tagging interactions by contact reason, customer segment, and resolution type. This revealed three distinct friction clusters buried in the platform's customer-facing workflows: predictable points of confusion that no amount of frontline coaching would fix.
I brought the findings into cross-functional sessions with the Product team, arriving with a diagnosis and a proposed workflow redesign for each cluster, not just a list of complaints. Three targeted changes shipped. In parallel, I led a knowledge base revision, written in plain language; no jargon, no assumptions about technical fluency, that addressed the confusion directly, reducing similar queries by 25%.
Team Development · Coaching Programme
The Problem
A team handling complex SaaS queries across EMEA and APAC was under two contradictory pressures: reduce handle time to manage volume, while improving resolution quality so customers didn't call back.
Conventional speed coaching reliably damages one to improve the other. The actual gap wasn't speed at all. It was decision confidence: agents were spending time double-checking themselves and not explaining to customers. They knew the answer. They didn't trust that they knew it.
The Approach
I redesigned the coaching programme around the real diagnosis. Rather than timed drills, I introduced scenario-based sessions built around real escalation examples, with structured debrief focused on the decision logic, not just the outcome.
I built a shared repository where senior agents documented their reasoning, not just their scripts. This gave lower-performing agents a mental model to work from, not a template to follow blindly.
I also implemented a 100% education quality compliance standard, a rubric that assessed every complex explanation not on whether it was technically correct, but on whether the customer could act on it immediately.
Logic Architecture
A framework is only as good as the clarity it creates for the person using it under pressure. Here is the operational logic I've built and refined for high-volume, high-stakes CS environments held to one standard: could the most time-pressured, least-patient person on your team follow this without asking for help?
A tiered decision system for routing high-stakes contacts without bottlenecking capacity or breaking customer trust. Designed for teams operating across 3+ time zones.
A Google Apps Script system eliminating 6+ hours/week of manual overhead across attendance tracking, volume monitoring, and leadership reporting — built for a 45-country outsourced CS operation serving EMEA and APAC.
Career Journey
A Geology degree trained me to read patterns beneath the surface. Every role since has been an application of that same instinct, moving progressively upstream in how organisations operate, until the problem is solved before it reaches the customer.
Mar 2025 — Present
Teleperformance · Global Ride-Hailing Platform
Promoted to lead outsourced CS operations for a global ride-hailing platform across EMEA and APAC. Managing 15–42 specialists, responsible for line management, quality architecture, escalation design, and strategic customer engagement. The shift: from solving individual customer problems to designing the systems that prevent them.
Nov 2023 — Mar 2025
Teleperformance · Global Ride-Hailing Platform
Frontline support across EMEA and APAC, specialising in customer education, onboarding, and product adoption. Achieved 100% education quality compliance and contributed to a 20% CSAT increase in six months by analysing conversation patterns and bringing specific findings to cross-functional teams.
Sept 2021 — Nov 2023
Liseen Productions
Redesigned client onboarding through friction point analysis, reducing time-to-value by 30%. Documented SOPs for cross-team handovers and managed stakeholder communications across operations and production. The foundation: learning to translate operational complexity into clarity for the people who depend on it.
Jan 2020 — Nov 2020
Vitafoam Nigeria · Foam & Mattress Production
First professional application of systems thinking: observing production processes, identifying inefficiencies, and learning that the place a problem shows up is rarely the place it originates.
Apr 2017 — Nov 2017
Addax Petroleum Nigeria
In D&C, if your data interpretation is wrong, the consequences are measured in millions of dollars and physical safety. I spent months bridging the gap between geological theory and engineering execution; a discipline I now use to bridge the gap between product design and user behavior.
Foundation
University of Lagos
Research methodology, pattern recognition, and data analysis. Geology established the core principle that has shaped every role since: surface events are symptoms, not causes.
Testimonials
In our line of work, most managers focus strictly on the daily grind of people management. Chukwudalu stands out because he focuses on the infrastructure that makes the team work. We collaborate daily, and he has become the "go-to" person for the wider leadership team when we face technical or process bottlenecks.
Chukwudalu possesses a global mindset that is essential for international management. For over a year, he served as our primary point of contact during critical expansion plans in emerging markets; bridging multiple teams to ensure our success plans actually worked on the ground.
Working With Me
I'm most useful to teams that have outgrown their current CS model. The product has scaled, the customer base has grown, but support volume is climbing and the team is managing symptoms rather than causes. Below is how I operate, not as a list of traits, but as a working style that either fits what you need or it doesn't.
I write for the audience, not the data. Whether it's a coaching note for a frontline specialist or a findings brief for a Product VP, I adapt the frame without losing the substance. I'm comfortable in async-first environments and hold written communication to a high standard.
When something breaks, my instinct is to understand the system before proposing a fix. This makes recommendations slower to arrive but significantly more durable. Stakeholders notice when a fix doesn't create a new problem somewhere else.
In cross-functional meetings, I show up with specific conversation examples, not abstract summaries. I've found that this is the fastest way to build alignment with Product and QA teams; real evidence is harder to dismiss than isolated metric scores.
My coaching focus is on developing judgment; the reasoning behind a decision, not just the right answer to a known scenario. I want the people I work with to handle situations I haven't anticipated. I've created career development pathways that have moved specialists into senior roles. That's the metric I'm most proud of.
Currently Building
What I'm actively learning and completing.
Completing the AI for CX course via Coursera. Focus: where AI-assisted triage, sentiment analysis, and automated summarisation fit inside the escalation and coaching frameworks I've already built. Not the tools — the architecture that makes the tools useful.
Working through Trailhead toward Salesforce Admin certification. Priority modules: Service Cloud, Case Management, and SLA rule configuration; the features most directly applicable to CS operations at scale. Target: certified within 90 days.
Google's AI Essentials course is next in the queue. Objective: build a grounded understanding of AI capabilities and limitations to inform how I design workflows that integrate AI without removing human judgment from the decisions that require it.
The shift I'm tracking: AI handles tier-1 resolution at volume, humans own tier-2 judgment and relationship recovery. The CS ops leader of the next three years is the person who designs the boundary between those two layers, and builds the QA system to hold it.
Let's Connect
I'm actively targeting CS Operations Manager, Head of CX, and Senior Team Lead roles in global SaaS, fintech, and marketplace environments: remote-first or hybrid. I also take on a small number of fractional engagements with companies building their CS function from the ground up.
Open to remote · Global · Fintech · Marketplace · SaaS · African tech