Career Guides, Learning and Study Guides

Customer Service Career Guide

Posted on by Seán O'Connor

This Customer Service Career Guide aims to provide you with an overview of careers and education for customer service roles. Customer service is a service provided by a business for a customer before and after a purchase or use of goods. This assistance is normally provided through phone call support, email, and sometimes live chat services on the company’s website. Someone who works in customer service provides information about products to incoming callers, process orders and deal with complaints. This Customer Service Career Guide will provide you with guidance.

Customer Service Career Guide

Sales and customer service vacancies occupied 12% of all job listings on the Department of Social Protection Jobs Ireland, and 6% on IrishJobs.ie. The sectors in which these vacancies occurred were banking, customer services/call centres, financial services and insurance and sales.

Job Titles

Vacancies for sales and customer service occupations were most frequent for:

  • Field sales agents,
  • Sales and retail assistants; approximately half of these positions were part-time,
  • Customer service occupations (often multilingual positions, contact centre agents, verification officers in Driving Licence Centres),
  • Other sales/customer services (tele-sales, merchandisers, credit collection, pharmacy assistants).
Experience

Department of Social Protection Jobs Ireland had the highest share of job advertisements for vacant sales positions, and it was noted that of these listings 46% required no minimum experience. This was the highest level of all occupational groups. A further 44% required some level of experience, while only 7% requested fully experienced persons: the lowest recorded of the occupational groups.

Education Courses in Customer Service

CMIT are currently offering a QQI course in Customer Service. This distance learning, QQI accredited course means that Students can study flexibly at home, or at work, and can gain a nationally accredited Qualification. This comprehensive distance learning course is designed to enable the learner to gain an indepth understanding of the customer service function within an organisation and to develop effective customer service skills. The course is particularly relevant for those who currently work in customer service or wish to work in a customer service role. It is also very suitable for managers and supervisors of customer service teams.  By choosing to study this course with CMIT, Students have 24×7 access to CMIT eLearning for the duration of the course. This includes a comprehensive Course Manual, Video, Quizzes and personalised Tutor Support. The course documentation for this QQI certified course is detailed and easy to read. You will also be able to upload assessments online and receive online feedback from your Tutor. You can use the eLearning system from any computer that has internet access.

What Will I Learn on My Course?

Students will learn how to:

  • Understand customer service
  • Know the customer service rules
  • Make customer service personal
  • Improve the customer relationship
  • Monitor and solving customer service problems
  • Process customer service complaints
  • Work with others to improve customer service
  • Promote continuous improvement in customer service
  • Develop customer service skills.
Job Prospects

As shown from the Forfás report statistics above, there are many places available in the customer service sector for prospering hopefuls wishing to get into one of these positions in the future. There will always be room for improvement in the customer service department of companies, as they aim to please their potential customers and existing ones to ensure positive feedback reverberates within their industry and target audience. A competent and friendly customer care worker can often be the difference between that person doing business with the company or one of their rivals. With high concentration and believability, a customer care team will provide a business with a healthy image to buyers and will aim to set a benchmark of excellence. A recent study by Solas noted that 5% of all jobs advertised with the Department of Social Protection Jobs Ireland were taken by administrative/secretarial occupations. This 5% included positions such as financial administrative clerks, multilingual sales/customer support admin roles etc. IrishJobs.ie’s records indicated that 13% of their advertisements were were also taken up by administrative/secretarial roles. (Via Forfas Vacancy Overview)

What can I expect to do in a Customer Service role?
  • “Listen to customers’ questions and concerns, and provide answers or responses.
  • Provide information about products and services.
  • Take orders, calculate charges, and process billing or payments.
  • Review or make changes to customer accounts.
  • Handle returns or complaints.
  • Record details of customer contacts and actions taken.
  • Review and select standard responses for answers or solutions.
  • Refer customers to supervisors or more experienced employees.” (American BLS)
Those working in customer service will also be expected to implement particular strategies and procedures, such as:
  • Customer Quality Systems
  • TQM
  • SWOT and PESTLE Analysis of customer service
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Reviewing CRM
  • Service Improvement
  • Monitoring and measuring service
  • Review and evaluation of service levels.

For more information on CMIT’s Business and Management courses, please click here.