What Do Customer Services Professionals Do?

Your customer service job descriptions detail the customer service functions and how they fit into your customer success team. The Customer Service Representative duties include handling complaints, responding to customer inquiries, sales, and resolving technical problems, all of which are critical for company success, growth, and reducing customer churn.

Depending on the company type, size, product, or service, the typical responsibilities of Customer Service Representatives might include:

• Answering incoming phone calls
• Responding to customer emails and online chat
• Fulfilling customer requests
• Providing customer support
• Selling the company’s products
• Promoting company news
• Using computer systems to record conversation details
• Updating customer records
• Handling service issues
• Acting as the first point of contact for many customers
• Resolving highly technical problems
• Ensuring the maximum value from existing and new customers
• Activating subscription feature requests
• Speaking to internal teams and answering employee questions (Head Office or HR Customer Service Representatives)
• Handling employee misconduct (Support Team Managers)
• Arranging product replacements for customers
• Cancelling services and processing refunds for customers

Customer Services Role

The duties of the customer service teams are completed by customer experience specialists in roles titled as:

• Customer Support Reps
• Customer Service Rep
• Customer Services Manager
• Customer Support Team Leader
• Customer Success Officer
• Senior Customer Service Representative

Customer Services Responsibilities And Duties

Customer service duties are the must-do and high-priority responsibilities of the role. These are the job aspects that you will likely govern the customer service employees’ performance on, and as you can imagine, efficiently handling incoming calls and customer inquiries, ensuring high customer satisfaction, and creating sales leads are high on the list.

Customer services responsibilities and duties include:

• Attending customer service team meetings
• Responding to customer emails and online chat
• Continued learning of the company’s products
• Assisting customers with refunds or cancellations
• Completing administrative tasks
• Handling service issues
• Acting as the first point of contact for customers/maintaining open communication channels
• Adding subscription features on request
• Answering incoming phone calls in a timely manner
• Answering customer questions/customer queries
• Effectively resolving customer complaints and customer issues
• Assess customers and promoting the company’s products and services
• Completing sales or passing leads on to the sales team
• Updating customer records and customer information/process customer accounts
• Processing payments and customer orders
• Ensure customer satisfaction/maintain high customer satisfaction
• Handling staff misconduct (contact centre managers)
• Handling warrant issues and arranging product replacements

These duties are pretty generic, but you can make the job’s duties more engaging and meaningful by saying how the responsibility should be accomplished. For example, ‘You will resolve customer complaints following communication procedures and by recommending appropriate solutions.’

Customer Services Skills

Whether you are a small or large business, customer service skills are in high demand and it is essential that your recruitment process lets you hire candidates with the right level of experience, traits, and abilities.

To ensure your Customer Support Reps can complete their duties and ensure an excellent customer experience, your front-line staff need skills that include:

• Attentiveness during customer interactions/ensuring customer satisfaction/ability to build sustainable relationships
• Good listening skills/active listening/hearing the customer voice
• Good communication skills/written communication skills/open and interactive communication
• Motivational leadership skills (Manager and Crisis Management positions)
• Troubleshooting problems
• Taking ownership to ensure resolution in a timely manner
• Decisions making, such as when to escalate an issue to a Customer Support Team Manager
• Familiarity with customer support software, including CRM and Microsoft Excel
• Technical knowledge for resolving service issues or directing the caller to the appropriate internal teams
• Multitasking/using great listening skills while typing or researching an answer
• Attention to detail/detail orientated
• Proactive questioning/asking for feedback from customers
• Committed, to meeting agreed deadlines with customers
• Selling skills
• Interpersonal abilities
• Time management
• Team-working and collaboration
• Empathy and compassion
• Numeracy
• Problem-solving skills
• Objectivity
• Target-driven
• Adaptable
• Presentation skills ability (team leaders and managers)
• Foreign language skills (an advantage)
• Ability to work in a fast paced environment

Customer Services Qualifications And Education

The required qualifications and education depend on the customer service representative key responsibilities and level of seniority but might include:

• A Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree (leadership roles)
• College or High School Diploma such as Level 1 Certificate in Customer Service or Level 2 Certificate in Contact Centre Operations
• Computer CRM systems proficiency
• Technical knowledge of a service or product

Required Customer Services Experience And Customer Services Training

A good customer service representative might have previous experience in a customer services role. Training might be evident if the individual has completed a Customer Service Intermediate or Advanced Apprenticeship.

Customer Services Job Description FAQs

Here we answer your questions on customer services roles, job titles, and job descriptions.

WHAT ARE THE CUSTOMER SERVICES ROLES?

Customer service representative is the primary job title with variations, including customer support representative and customer support executive.

WHAT DOES A CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE DO?

They respond to incoming customer telephone calls, emails, and chat with the goal of giving customers a good experience and securing sales leads.

WHAT ARE THE SKILLS NEEDED FOR CUSTOMER SERVICES?

Outstanding communication is the primary skill which facilities complaint resolution and upselling to customers.

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE?

Resolving customer issues and handling complaints are recognised by many as the most important role of customer service teams. Supporting marketing teams, promoting the company’s offerings, and selling the company’s products are equally crucial, and key performance indicators for the role

WHAT ARE 3 IMPORTANT QUALITIES OF CUSTOMER SERVICE?

A Customer Support Representative must be efficient in answering phone calls and be able to answer customer questions. Excellent communication skills are essential, and a Customer Service Specialist must have good sales skills, encouraging customers to make purchasing decisions, as sales targets are often present in Customer Service roles.

HOW DO CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES RESOLVE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS?

Customer Service Reps resolve customer issues by first letting them voice their complaint and frustration. By acknowledging customers and their feelings, Customer Service Reps find customer success, turning a negative experience into a positive outcome.

HOW DO I HIRE A CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE?

Your approach to job advertising for Customer Service will vary depending on the position and customer service skills you need. You will need to implement a hiring strategy that covers advertising on general and specialist customer service job boards, social media, and word of mouth referrals.

Your customer services hiring strategy could also include having a presence at relevant conferences and online with specialist customer service organisations.

Crucial elements that will affect hiring success include writing an effective customer service job description and selecting the proper job title. Flat fee recruitment solutions provide you with job description templates and continue to deliver the best results when hiring Customer Service Reps and Customer Support Officers.

HOW DO I ENGAGE CUSTOMER SERVICE CANDIDATES?

As a final note for employers and recruiters, it is crucial to remember that while a job description is about what and who you want, describing this alone will not create an inbox full of candidates willing to comply. A customer service representative job description and job advert must go beyond the duties, skills, education, qualifications, traits, and tasks that you want and communicate the position’s value to job seekers.

Businesses and call centres should convey their employee value propositions to engage candidates, highlighting both monetary and other benefits. Benefits that will entice qualified job seekers to apply might include:

1. Stating the customer service representative salary or average salary range

2. Focusing on work-life balance

3. Flexible working – are hours flexible, or is the role remote/work from home?

4. Opportunities to gain additional qualifications

5, Career development opportunities

6. The quality of contact centre facilities or equipment

7. How the organisation’s values align with those of customers and employees

WHAT CUSTOMER SERVICES TASKS SHOULD I INCLUDE IN A JOB DESCRIPTION?

The tasks of a customer service representative job are any other activities that they complete occasionally or on a daily basis. These are usually subsidiary tasks such as relaying customer feedback to the appropriate department (management or marketing teams), maintaining accurate call records, and relaying pertinent information such as company news.

It is tempting to leave some of the more ‘mundane’ tasks out to make your customer service jobs sound more attractive, but this can lead to trouble down the road as you may recruit individuals that are not a perfect match. If you hire the wrong person for your customer service team, other team members, your customers, and your performance metrics may suffer. The employee might leave your employment, and you are back to square one, requiring another investment in recruitment and training.

If you get to the end of the process outlined here and find that your customer service representative job description is too long and concise has gone out the window, it is time to review your first draft. To bring things back into line, you should delete unnecessary phrases and fluff, remove prepositional phrases, focus on what is role critical, and refrain from putting your entire ‘about us’ page in your content.

WHAT IS A CUSTOMER SERVICE JOB DESCRIPTION?

A customer services job description is a document that sets out the role’s duties, tasks, and key skills. Putting these in black and white is crucial and will help you find the right match for a position that directly affects customer satisfaction, customer churn, sales, brand reputation, and business success.

The job description should be transparent and clearly set out who you are, who you want, what they will do, and why a customer service representative, team leader, or manager might want to work for you. It helps tremendously to use language and jargon that engages your audience.

When you get all of this right and include the best words to use when writing customer services job descriptions, you will get job applications from qualified candidates that closely match your ideal person specification.

HOW DO I WRITE A CUSTOMER SERVICES JOB DESCRIPTION?

When writing a job description either for advertising a customer service representative job or an internal job specification you need to focus on 5 main criteria:

1. What are the key jobs, tasks, and duties required for a customer services position

2. Consider all the job responsibilities required for a customer support role

3. What skills the person must have for the job

4. What personality traits the person must have to work in customer services

5. Appropriate and relevant education and qualifications

These five criteria should help you build a picture of your ideal candidate. Good questions to consider that will help you write a concise leadership or customer service representative job description that stands apart from others (essential in the current competitive job market), and will attract candidates of a high calibre, include:

1. What value does this role bring to your organisation?

2. How does the role align with your organisation’s culture, values, and mission?

3. How does this role differ from other positions?

4. How is this role similar to other positions?

5. What are the minimum customer service representative skills or transferable skills?

6. What are examples of your standards and targets?

Suppose you are not hands-on in the customer experience department or highly familiar with the company’s customers, products, or services. In that case, it can help to interview one of your team leaders or a good customer service representative to gain a greater understanding.

A word about jargon: The phrase ‘jargon’ has good and bad connotations, and if it isn’t carefully considered, it may deter candidates from applying. Ask yourself if words and phrases are company exclusive or recognisable by individuals in the industry or by professionals who may have valuable transferable skills refined in alternative business sectors.

Furthermore, if you are hiring for senior-level or management positions, you might expect candidates to have a greater vocabulary and understanding of call centre jargon. However, if you are hiring for a junior-level customer service representative job, consider being as straightforward and transparent as possible.