Singtel's Customer Experience Chief on Leading with AI Without Losing the Human Touch
Source: Her World Singapore
Singtel customer experience head Rae Nah is charting a middle path between AI-driven efficiency and genuine human connection — one that puts people front and centre even as the country's largest telco rolls out automation across its care operations.
Singtel customer experience head Rae Nah is charting a middle path between AI-driven efficiency and genuine human connection — one that puts people front and centre even as the country's largest telco rolls out automation across its care operations. In an interview with Her World Singapore, the 15-year Singtel veteran laid out a philosophy that treats AI as a tool for reducing friction, not replacing the human interactions that define service relationships.
Nah's approach is deliberately purposeful. "We use AI very purposefully and intentionally to reduce friction, but not to remove care," she said. Singtel is deploying AI across its care teams to handle repetitive, manual tasks — freeing up frontline staff to focus on what machines cannot replicate: building real relationships with customers. The strategy reflects a broader shift in Singapore's telecommunications sector, where customer experience has become a key battleground as AI reshapes service delivery across every touchpoint.
The implications extend beyond Singtel. As one of Singapore's largest employers, the telco's approach to AI-augmented customer service offers a template for the broader economy. Nah emphasised that technology must always be "fronted by humans" and that leadership in the AI era requires framing problems well and creating conditions for the best solutions to emerge — rather than prescribing how work should be done. Her management philosophy stresses clarity, support, and honest feedback over top-down direction.
Why it matters for Singapore: Singtel's careful, human-first approach to AI in customer experience mirrors a wider tension in Singapore's economy — how to capture AI's efficiency gains without sacrificing the service quality that underpins the country's reputation as a trusted business hub. With customer-facing AI deployments accelerating across retail, banking, and government services, Nah's model of intentional, human-led automation provides a practical roadmap for organisations navigating the same transformation. It also signals that Singapore's largest companies are thinking beyond cost-cutting to the longer-term question of how AI changes the relationship between businesses and the people they serve.