Some time ago, I played this game, called “Rogue Survivor”. One of its features was giving orders to followers, which was useful, specially when telling them to grab/not grab items around them, to trade/ not trade with other survivos, how to attack (cautious, coragerous, coward), and you could also use their skills to aid you, provided they trusted you enough.
I think it is easy enough to implement, and it would improve the npc by much.