Applied Pragmatics in Customer Service Communication: A Study of Nigerian Bank Call Centres

This study examines the pragmatic features of customer service communication in Nigerian commercial bank call centres, focusing on selected operations in Lagos and Abuja. As financial service delivery migrates increasingly to remote channels, the linguistic quality of call centre interactions has become critical to customer satisfaction and brand trust, yet the pragmatics of Nigerian call centre discourse has not been systematically investigated. The study adopts a corpus-based discourse analysis methodology informed by politeness theory and communication accommodation theory. A corpus of 80 recorded customer service calls was compiled from two major Nigerian banks, with informed consent, covering complaint handling, product enquiry, and account management interaction types. The analysis examines politeness strategies, face management, accommodation patterns, and communicative breakdown instances. Findings reveal that call centre agents employ predominantly positive politeness strategies, with high use of sympathy expressions and agreement markers, but significant deficiencies in face-threatening act mitigation during complaint handling interactions. Code-switching from English to Pidgin is documented in approximately 20 percent of calls as a rapport strategy, though this is not institutionally sanctioned. The study recommends the incorporation of applied pragmatics training into customer service agent development programmes at Nigerian financial institutions. Keywords: applied pragmatics, customer service, call centre, politeness, Nigerian banks.