Very Good Service: good customer service stories

Information about customer service jobs

We brought in one place as much information about customer service jobs as we could find.This will be updated as required so please do not hesitate to leave your comments on how to improve the page. When thinking about creating a customer service job or applying for one, employers and potential employees try to assess the impact that the proposed job has or is going to have on the organisation. One of the key step is to establish a detailed job description which will determine the key skills that internal candidates and external applicants should have. Then the next step is to identify the job and/or the employee, depending on what side of the fence you are.

To help with the task, we  present below a “customer services job list” for people who wish to help build a job description for the new customer service position.

Customer Service Job description

The main elements of the job description, could be grouped into several categories depending on the activities that the employee is expected to undertake

External client facing duties

• Handling customer enquiries directed to the company,
• Giving information about products and services,
• Performing simple customer service administrative tasks such as change of address,
• Taking payments for additional services or new products required by the customers,
• Anticipating customer’s needs in order to best serve them,
• Propose services and products to customers which could be in addition to or in replacement of what they currently buy from the company,
• providing information to customers on delivery options,
• updating customers on the progress of their order and delivery,
• organising the return of faulty goods,
• correcting errors if a service was not delivered according to the customer’s instructions,
• Handling customer complaints

Internal client facing duties

• Organise a coordinated response from different departments to make sure that the customer needs are serviced appropriately
• Establish strong relationship between the old channels (phone, letters etc) and the new channels such as social media customer service provided via Twitter and Facebook.
• Identify individuals who have the right potential to fulfil client facing customer service jobs.

For people involved in a customer service management role

• Recruitment of staff and performance management
• Advising staff with regards to their customer service training needs
• Communicating with staff so they know what to do and are aware of the key initiatives within the company
• Creating a good team spirit as happy employees often make happy customers
• Never forgetting that providing frontline customer service remains a key part of their jobs

Handling complaints

• Knowing how to handle complaints is part of every customer service job description, especially if operating in a client facing role
• Prepare reporting on complaints to analyse root causes and take corrective actions where required. This is especially important as many customers are exposed to the actions of the customer services teams on a daily basis and the reputation of the company could suffer if they do not perform adequately.

Finally, while it is fine to pick up a ready-made customer service job description from a website or a specialised consultancy, do not forget to customise the description to match the specificities of your business.

Where to find a customer service job

On the resources page of our website we have set up a page dedicated to customer service jobs. It includes the dedicated pages put together by the main media channels such as the national newspapers, jobs boards, specialised agencies and recruitment firms but also, where they exist, the dedicated customer service jobs page of some large companies which regularly search for new employees with the relevant skills. We have tried to find an indicator which would help to establish where there are the most availabilities for customer service jobs amongst the big cities in the UK such as London, Liverpool Birmingham and Manchester. A simple search on the internet is not yielding very useful results so we are trying to find a metric using some of the largest job websites. More on this topic later.

customer service jobs

Job opportunities

Some of the largest UK organisations have near permanent needs for additional customer service employees. The positions might be client facing, in retail stores or branches, office based, processing client orders for example, sometimes in call centres to answer customers queries or even home based where employees are working remotely. As examples, we have identified a small number of dedicated pages on company websites with customer service job opportunities:

In our customer service community on Google+, we have a dedicated stream for customer service jobs. Over the past few weeks, we have seen advertised positions for customer service jobs in, to name a few, Santander, HSBC and Barclays. The jobs stream can be followed here: https://plus.google.com/communities/118121312665022161148/stream/2882d4fe-05d6-4940-bb12-883549108960

Barclays Bank operates a number of contact centres, call centres, processing centres and retail branches which all potentially offer customer service job opportunities. The dedicated customer service recruitment page can be found on: http://jobs.barclays.co.uk/our-business-areas/retail-operations/customer-service/

Virgin Media recruits individuals able to handle customer queries and provide them with advice. Many roles are telephone based. More information can be found here: http://careers.virginmedia.com/opportunities/serve/customer-contact.html

Nestle operates three customer service centres in the UK.  Members of their team fulfill many duties such as fulfillment capture, customer stock monitoring, promotional orders and other general customer service functions. Their website can be found here: http://www.nestlecareers.co.uk/content/customer-service-nestle-jobs.htm

On our website verygoodservice.com we have prepared a list of websites proposing customer service jobs. It includes job portals, newspapers and media sites and the dedicated pages of some companies. To access the page visit: http://www.verygoodservice.com/tags/customer_service_jobs.htm

Where to find a customer service employee who is right for the job

All the traditional channels in terms of job boards, agencies and ads are available and remain, for many, the prefered channel when trying to identify customer service employees. LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a reliable source of information for agencies and companies which want to recruit directly. Many companies also advertise on linked in and you can visit the page dediacted to customer service jobs on LinkedIn here: http://www.linkedin.com/job/q-customer-service-jobs

With the emergence of social media a new breed of customer service employees is required and some individuals have emerged as real stars in their field. Sometimes even, because of the need to personalise the service and customer interactions, they become public personalities with their names visible for all to see, on Twitter for example. No doubt their reputation as being able to deliver a good customer service will encourage companies wanting to upgrade their capabilities to contact these employees directly and try to encourage them to switch jobs.

Customer service interview questions

If you are being interviewed for a job or indeed interviewing someone, you need to prepare carefully.  Both interviewer and interviewee have to establish what they wish to learn from the interview process, anticipate what questions may be asked and think through some of the potential answers. Here are a few customer service interview questions to get potential candidates and employers started:

– why is good customer service important for the success of our organisation?

– can you think of some examples where, during the course of your job, you have not delivered a level of customer service commensurate with what the client was expecting? what where the reasons? what would you do differently if facing this situation again?

– what do you know about the customer philosophy which we have adopted within the company?

– within the remit of your job, how do you intend to promote a positive service culture within our company?

– what are the key factors required for a successful customer service team?

– how would you deal with a difficult customer who is not happy with the level of customer service provided by the company?

We will soon extend this post to include further typical customer service interview questions.

Further information

If you are looking for further information about customer service jobs, why not visit:

National Careers Service: a useful website which includes the job profile of a customer service assistant as well as data and links to a number of job boards: https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/CustomerServiceAssistant.aspx

Similar to the one above the government website will take you to the relevant information for customer service manager jobs: https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/customerservicesmanager.aspx

The website of Network Rail includes example of what a customer service position could entail. Plenty of information as well as a useful site to get a feel for real life customer service job opportunities: http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/10154.aspx

Last edit on 17th November 2015