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If you work in customer service, you’re already familiar with the need to wear multiple hats daily. It’s a vital role with significant responsibilities, demanding a wide range of skills.
As a result, customer support agents have to play many roles. They are like the face of your company, being on the frontline, always managing the customers. The way they handle, and communicate with the customers, always adds major value to the organization as well as the customers.
There is a saying, “Customer service is not only a department, but also the job of everyone.” So, at least for the sake of your company, you must define the duties of customer service. Sounds fascinating, right? Excellent!
Here’s one comprehensive guide for you that provides an in-depth look at the various customer service roles, responsibilities, job opportunities, and required qualifications.
In simple terms, customer service is all about offering assistance and support to customers on behalf of an organization.
Customer service agents handle and resolve customer concerns or questions effectively through multiple support platforms like live chat, chatbots, phone calls, emails, voice or video calls, and social media platforms.
Here are some common tasks in customer service:
As per a survey done by Salesforce, “89% of consumers tend to make another purchase after experiencing positive customer service.”
Nowadays, you need more than a get idea and capital, to get your business running successfully. From day one, great customer service has to be an integral part of the company’s DNA.
Customer service created a bridge between the customers and your organization. It helps to make them happy and satisfied customers, thus boosting your sales conversions. With effective customer support, you can easily retrieve the cost of customer acquisition. The five main reasons why customer service should be important for your business are:
Positive Experience in Customer Service
Customer service representatives/agents deal with the customers on behalf of your company. For providing assistance, they use several customer service channels like live chat, phone & video calls, emails, and so on. They always try to offer instant assistance and resolve customer issues as soon as possible.
The duties of a customer service agent may vary from company to company depending on the size of the businesses, company requirements, and types of product offerings they have. Some of the responsibilities of a customer support agent may include:
What do the duties of a customer service representative/agent look like? Well, a quick look at any customer service representative job description would give a fair bit of an idea. But I have mentioned below the 10 major duties of customer service agents ranging from the frontline and technical support representatives to the customer service managers of the company.
Replying to all product or company-related questions is one of the key responsibilities of a customer service agent. So, the agents have to be updated and knowledgeable enough before handling such queries.
Wrong information may lead to customer dissatisfaction and harm the company’s reputation. Knowing everything about the company and its services is crucial but they have to master it.
For SaaS or tech organizations, resolving product-related issues, troubleshooting technical problems of customers, and offering technical assistance are some of the important duties of the help desk customer service team. It includes offering support for setting up, customization, upgradation, and maintenance of the service or product.
For such jobs, the team should possess deep knowledge of the product offerings and some hard skills.
Apart from assisting customers, many times, the help desk support representatives also closely work with the development team to ensure the optimization of service and improved user experience.
Handling all the orders and transactions is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a customer support executive. It also includes the cancellation of orders, returns, and product exchanges. They need to make sure that all the incoming orders and transactions are rightly processed efficiently and on time.
Generally, an entry-level customer support agent handles all the order processing-related stuff.
Delivering information about the latest product offerings also comes under the umbrella of a customer service specialist. In some ways, they are also a part of the sales team you can say.
However, their basic job is to help customers with issues related to your company, products, or services. They are responsible to offer a positive experience and get you some satisfied and happy customers.
Customers Pay More for Better Service
“Always be proactive rather than reactive.”
This is the mantra that you should follow to make your customer service a great success. Customers nowadays want more personalized and proactive service from companies. So, those days are gone, when support agents used to wait for customers to poke them whenever they need some sort of assistance.
Proactive outreach has become a major responsibility of the support team. Now they are expected to reach the customers proactively and offer more personalized assistance.
Several customer support tools are available in the market which can help your support team to initiate a conversation with the customers proactively. REVE Chat is one of them. Its ‘Proactive Chat’ feature allows the support agent to offer instant assistance to the customers much before they even ask for it.
You can use the proactive approach in some of the below-mentioned scenarios:
Handling unhappy customers is one of the toughest duties of many of your customer service specialists. Basically, for the front-line support agents, being the first point of contact is a real critical job.
The customers are already angry, and some may shout at them madly. But agents should handle such situations tactfully because of several reasons. One, once dissatisfied, chances are most of the customers will never come back to you for doing business. Secondly, it will hamper your company’s reputation.
Don’t forget, if customers can say good things about you, they can say completely opposite too. So, by any chance, they have to solve their issues as soon as possible.
To handle such situations, your customer service team needs to be trained in a varied range of customer service skills like how to be polite and soft-spoken, good listener, patient, empathetic, good communication skills, keeping calm, and so on.
Apart from assisting customers, getting feedback from them is also one of the important customer service duties. Collecting and analyzing the customer feedback is necessary for your company and there are several ways to automate the whole process.
The customer service team can directly engage with the customers for getting their feedback regarding the products, or during live chat sessions, they can ask customers to rate the service. After collecting feedback, they need to analyze and take notes of the suggestions if required, on what are the areas of further improvement.
Your customer service team will work directly with the marketing team for analyzing the feedback reports.
Whenever we plan to buy something, we always search for online reviews to understand what other people think of that specific product or service. No doubt reviews influence the purchase decision. If we get some good reviews, we tend to think positively about that product.
Customers are also no exception. Customers use several platforms like social media channels or various review websites to give their views. Responding to those product reviews is very important and has become an important duty of customer service.
So, the support team should thank the customers for their good reviews and should take the negative reviews very seriously. They should contact the unhappy customers to understand what went wrong and try to resolve the issues as soon as possible.
Don’t forget that a large audience is watching the negative reviews, and it will not take much time to spread the bad words. Therefore, your support team should know how to handle unpleasant reviews and turn those into positive experiences.
Monitoring all the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and analytics are one of the most important customer service duties to discuss. Those KPIs consist of
Apart from these metrics, several customer service solutions also provide information about your support representatives as well as the customers.
For example, as a live chat software, REVE Chat offers analytics and reports related to the support team where we can get information like the total number of handled chats, missed chats, chat transfers and offline messages, the login and logout times of agents to evaluate how they are performing.
Apart from that, REVE Chat also offers information about the customers who are on your website or mobile application like their geographic locations, pages they are eyeing, used browsers, etc to make your proactive chat invitations much more personalized.
Because of handling customers regularly, the customer service team is one of the most knowledgeable teams in your company. They actually know the ins and outs of the organization. So, they can develop several useful documents for the customers. It may include installation manuals, FAQs, articles, blogs, troubleshooting documentaries, etc.
To become the best customer service agent, you need to have a problem-solving mindset. You need to be patient, warm, empathetic, and a great teacher for others. Here are some tips for you!
First make them comfortable with you so that they can easily share their concerns with you. It will help you to resolve the issues sooner and get good ratings from them.
A thorough product knowledge is very important to provide the right information to your customers. You can also help them to choose the right product or service as per their requirements. Make sure you are also up to date about product upgrades, new launches, discounts, etc.
No matter how upset they are, always be professional with them. If you can handle them with respect, you will also get the same in return. Apart from that, resolving their issues will be much easier.
You need to communicate with the customers on a regular basis. With good communication skills, you can make those interactions much more professional and effective which helps to create a positive impact on the customers. Be it live chat, emails or phone calls, no matter what the communication channel is, you have to make it professional.
Being a customer support agent, you need to help your company to build good relationships with the customers. So, relationship- building techniques are mandatory for support agents. It allows them to connect with the customers in a better way.
Nearly most of the customer service agents need some sort of multi-tasking skills. They often talk to customers over phone calls or live chat sessions, answer several queries, process orders and payments, ensuring that the consumers are happy, and they do all these together. So, being a multi-tasker, they need to handle all the work successfully thus diverting their attention from one job to another.
Some organizations differentiate customer support from customer service, some don’t. This depends on how big your company is. Smaller businesses, generally combine the different roles of customer service with customer support.
Mostly, the basic responsibilities of these two are the same. Sometimes, we use these different terminologies to reflect the different values of different companies.
Let’s look into the different job roles for customer service that companies offer:
A customer service agent is the face of the company. He works on the front line and directly handles the customers. The job of the customer service agents is basically much more proactive rather than reactive. They proactively engage with the customers to make them aware of the latest product launches, recent updates, upcoming sales, or company-related news. The total number of handled calls, chats, or emails for them is pre-defined on per day basis.
These remote customer support agents do the same duties as CSRs but virtually. They are highly skilled to manage not only the customers but also other colleagues and managers. They also have the duties of troubleshooting technical issues and replying to customer issues.
This position requires much more than only replying to customer queries. Apart from that, they need some kind of managerial and leadership skills as chances are sometimes, they may need to fit into the roles of support managers or supervisors.
They generally handle different technical issues related to software, hardware, or different applications. Instead of waiting for customers to poke them for assistance, they deliberately reach out to them for offering tips or solutions much before they ask for help.
To become successful in this domain, one needs to have a degree in computer science or information technology and a strong educational background.
Supervisors generally manage and control the juniors or a smaller part of the whole customer support department. They are mentored by a support manager. They also handle customer queries at different levels. Excellent communication and leadership skills are really important to apply for this position.
Managers can be called the anchor of the whole customer support department. Their key responsibilities include supervising, training, and tracking progress of the whole support team. They mostly are the decision makers for customer complaints or any other employee-related issues. They have to be the best mentors and communicators.
A customer service tool is a technology that helps the customer support department to handle queries in the best possible way. From handling customers, listening to and resolving problems to getting them notified, a good customer service software can do it all. The support department uses different tools to ease their work. Here are some of the most useful tools commonly used in customer service:
This is one of the most popular customer service tools that companies use to offer instant assistance to customers on their websites, mobile apps and other social media platforms. Customers can get in touch with the support agents from any of these channels and get real-time help whenever they need. Agents also can manage all chat interactions from a single place.
There are many live chat tools available in the market to choose from and REVE Chat is one of the best. It in an AI powered omnichannel customer service tool that helps companies to offer instant help to their customers. Want to give it a try? SIGN UP for its 14-day FREE TRIAL today.
With CRM tools, you can manage all the interactions throughout a customer’s life cycle. All the important customer details can be stored in a CRM, and you can refer to it each time while interacting with the customer. Agents can track interactions, and deliver personalized service based on a customer’s history and preferences.
Chatbots are AI powered tools that automate many of the business operations including customer service. When configured with general FAQs, these bots can handle multiple customer queries effectively and allowing the support agents to concentrate on more complex tasks. Smart bots let the company offer 24/7 customer service even after the business hours.
A knowledge base consists of articles, guides, tutorials, and frequently asked questions (FAQs). It allows customers to find answers to their queries without needing to contact a support agent and reducing the volume of support tickets. Information is organized into categories and subcategories, making it easy for customers to navigate and find relevant articles.
With call center tools companies can manage and optimize their phone-based customer support. It routes calls to the right agents, tracks call data and integrates with other tools like CRM and helpdesk software to provide context for every conversation.
Whether you have a company that wants to expand its customer service department or a candidate looking out for jobs in customer service, a good and detailed job description helps to set expectations both for the employers and the candidates seeking those specific jobs. It is the perfect place to mention all the company requirements and qualifications. Here, we’ve compiled various customer service job description templates to help you create your own application.
A Customer Service Representative (CSR) is responsible for providing timely assistance to customers, addressing inquiries, resolving issues, and offering information on a company’s products and services.
Job Title: Customer Service Representative / Agent
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Customer service representative job description template
Customer Service Specialists have many similar KRAs just like the support representatives, but they are much more experienced in handling complex and challenging situations with customers.
Job Title: Customer Service Specialist
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Customer Service Specialist Job Description Template
In a company, a customer service team lead role is responsible for managing and guiding a team of customer service representatives. He ensures the team meets performance targets and delivers high-quality services to their customers. As a team lead, he is more into hiring, training, and managing a team of support agents rather than handling customer queries directly.
Job Title: Customer Service Team Lead
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Customer Service Team Lead Job Description Template
A Customer Service Manager oversees a company’s customer service operations and ensures that the team delivers high-quality support to the customers. While Team leads focus on managing and training support agents, customer service managers are more involved in planning and implementing tools and automation, aligning the team for better outcomes.
Job Title: Customer Service Manager
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Customer Service Manager Job Description Template
A Customer Success Manager (CSM) is mainly responsible for maintaining strong bonds with customers and ensuring they are happy and satisfied with the company. They don’t handle tickets to solve client issues. Rather they directly meet the customers to understand their objectives and ensure their requirements are met. The primary goal of a CSM is to enhance customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and drive customer retention and loyalty.
Job Title: Customer Success Manager
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Customer Success Manager Job Description Template
The Director of Customer Service is a senior role who is responsible for managing the entire customer service department. He ensures that the organization delivers exceptional services and experiences to the customers. This role involves setting strategic direction, implementing policies and procedures, managing budgets and teams, and directly reporting to the management. The Customer Service Director works closely with all other departments, such as business development, sales, and marketing.
Job Title: Customer Service Director
Job Summary: Offer a brief overview of what you are expecting from the candidates applying for this specific role. Mention whether the job is full-time or part-time and locations. Highlight one key skill that you want the candidates to have to be suitable for this role.
Director of Customer Service Job Description Template
Many times, job titles can become confusing! Just like the two designations- ‘Customer Service Representative’ and ‘Customer Service Associate. These two roles may sound similar, but they often serve different customer service duties and responsibilities. Let’s have a closer look at the basic differences.
Role: CSRs may indicate a slightly more senior or experienced position within the customer service team. They often manage more complex issues and have additional responsibilities compared to a customer service associate. They serve as the initial point of contact for customers, representing the company on the front lines.
Role: Some companies may use the phrase ‘Customer Service Associate’ for entry-level designations. They mainly handle basic customer queries and offer support through various support channels like email, phone calls, or live chat. Associates are mentored by senior team members to learn the department’s operations and organizational structure. With experience, they get more responsibilities.
When it comes to customer-facing roles in customer service, two terms that are often used interchangeably but serve distinct duties and responsibilities are Customer Service Representative and Customer Success Representative. Though both of these roles are very important to offer positive customer experiences, they differ significantly in their approach, focus, and long-term impact on the customer journey. Let’s look into the roles and responsibilities of customer service representatives and customer success representatives.
Role: The main job of a customer service representative is to understand a customer’s problem and offer a solution as soon as possible.
Role: A Customer Success Representative (CSR) is mainly responsible for ensuring that customers derive maximum value from the company’s product offerings. Their role is more proactive, aiming to build long-term relationships with the consumers to increase customer retention, loyalty, and growth.
First of all, A good customer service representative should be an excellent listener and communicator. He should possess the following key qualities:
The main duty of a customer support agent is to offer prompt assistance to the customers. His basic job responsibilities may include:
Customer service representatives typically assist customers through phone, email, live chat, social media platforms, and in-person interactions, depending on the company’s available support channels.
After each interaction, customer service representatives collect feedback from customers regarding the overall services and product offerings. This feedback is then shared with the relevant department to facilitate improvements and enhance future service quality.
Technology, such as CRM systems, live chat, chatbots, and ticketing platforms, helps customer support agents manage customer interactions, offer real-time assistance, track inquiries, automate repetitive tasks, and provide faster, more efficient service.
Now, you have a better understanding of the different roles and duties that the customer service specialist team plays in your organization. It must be looking a lot, well actually it is! All these different duties and positions can be divided throughout your customer service team.
For building the best support team, you need to invest. The returns are huge: you will get satisfied and happy customers who will come back to again for doing business, the employees will feel appreciated and valued and all these together will give you higher sales conversions and positive brand recognition.
Providing the best customer support and effective customer engagement are the two most important objectives of your company. Here at REVE Chat, we help you to achieve your goals. Want to give it a try? Start your FREE TRIAL today!
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Suvashree Bhattacharya is a researcher, blogger, and author in the domain of customer experience, omnichannel communication, and conversational AI. Serving as a content marketing strategist at REVE Chat, she develops contextual and interesting content for customers from different industries and segments like customer service, customer satisfaction, engagement, messaging platforms, etc. Passionate about writing and designing, she pours her heart out in writeups that are detailed, interesting, engaging, and more importantly cater to the requirements of the targeted audience. Her interests include reading, painting, and traveling.
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