Career Advice on How to Become a Customer Service RepresentativeGeneral Career Information |
|
Do you like people? Do you want to continue liking people? Then you might want to consider a different line of work. When beginning a job search or career planning, the nature of the work and how much you think you will like it should clearly be a consideration.
So what does the customer service representative do anyway? Customer service representatives act as a shield between agitated, furious and just plain mad customers and businesses. As a customer service representative, you will be on the frontline handling, processing and dealing with all sorts of customer complaints.
|
Career Facts: |
|
Not all of the work of the customer service representative focuses on having your head handed to you by a virtual and digital mob. Some of the work of the customer service representative is, in reality, less confrontational. For example, it may center more on the dispensing of information and responding to a wide-range of customer inquires and requests. Obviously, the job differs tremendously from industry to industry, but much of the work of the customer service representative is spent talking on the phone and working on computers. |
Career Opportunities and Job Outlook-Excellent: |
| If your dream is to be a customer service representative, well, today is your lucky day. The industry is expected to see a rather robust growth rate of twenty-five percent between now and 2016. This means that a massive 525,000 new customer service representatives will be entering the work force during that time frame. By 2016, there will be a truly staggering 2.7 million customer service representatives working in the United States. |
 |
A Day in The Life: |
|
A day in the life of a customer service representative often begins with extreme anger as the alarm clock goes off just six hours after the customer service representative got home from their “other job.” This is not to say that you cannot live well on the $13.60 an hour average pay of a customer service representative. Why of course you can- if you are living in your parent’s basement.
Next the words “they are not paying me enough for this” will be said several times usually while eating breakfast, getting in the car and walking into the often massive germ breeding human pen called a “call center.” Once inside the call center, the customer service representative will be often be treated to at least a few verbal tongue-lashings by customers during the course of the day. These customers are usually upset either the lack of service or lack of quality they have received from the manufacturer or service provider.
|
Average Salary: |
| But there must be big bucks for cleaning up a giant company’s mess right? The average customer service representatives makes about $13.60 an hour, with the top ten percent of customer service representatives earning about $22 an hour. |
$25k - $44k |
Career Training and Qualifications: |
|
Part of the reason that it is tough for companies to find good customer service representatives is the emphasis on candidates possessing at least one graduate degree. Well, no not really. If you can speak and show up on time, you’ve got a shot at this job.
|
