Get to Know the Customer Service Role

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe what a customer service professional does.
  
• Identify the skills of a successful customer service professional.
  
• Explain the key activities customer service professionals perform.
  

What Is a Customer Service Professional?

At their core, customer service professionals solve customer problems and inquiries to provide satisfactory customer experiences. Finding the perfect solution is often complex. Many people across a service organization must work together to create a great experience for customers during their case resolutions. But service teams don’t just solve problems—they also drive loyalty. Done right, customer service is one of the most powerful customer retention tools in a company’s arsenal.

So what skills do you need to be a successful service professional? Let’s take a look.

Required Skills

Success in customer service depends on a combination of technical skills, like understanding complex customer service cases and technical tools, and soft skills, like active listening and effective communication. Together, they enable you to build relationships with teammates and customers while driving customer satisfaction and case resolution.

Whether you’re looking to build your skillset or advance your career, we’ve compiled the most common service skills. 

Key technical skills include: 

• Case management
  
• Collaboration
  
• Documentation
  
• Recruiting and hiring
  
• Reporting and metrics
  
• Troubleshooting
  

Critical tactical and soft skills include: 

• Active listening
  
• Customer communication
  
• Empathy
  
• Feedback
  
• Problem-solving
  
• Trust-building
  

Common Service Roles and Responsibilities

It takes teamwork to solve customer cases and drive customer loyalty. That includes everyone from the service agent who works directly with customers to the chief customer officer who is committed to the customer experience from the initial sale through churn. Note that while these job titles are typical in the service industry, actual job titles and roles can vary across companies. Let’s meet the team. 

Service Agent

A service agent engages with customers on behalf of a company. Their duties include answering customer inquiries, participating in meetings with the customer service team to discover new communication tactics, and maintaining expert knowledge about company products or services to best help customers.

Service Manager 

A customer service manager oversees, leads, and trains a company’s service staff. Customer service managers investigate and solve product and service complaints. They’re also sometimes known as a customer service supervisor.

Service Operations Analyst 

A service operations analyst is a key partner who interacts cross-functionally with multiple teams including product, development, and IT. They understand the entire customer service process at a company. A service operations analyst has a workforce management role alongside data analysis and data science expertise. Think of them as a service manager that manages workflows and processes rather than cases.

Field Service Leader 

A field service leader oversees all field service related activities in an organization. They develop the operational plan and motivate the dispatchers, mobile workers, and contractors representing their brand to improve customer support in the field.

Service Leader 

A service leader (director/VP) is responsible for managing all aspects of customer support and service. The service leader develops the organization’s customer service strategy and manages the overall performance of people and processes to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

Chief Customer Officer 

The chief customer officer (chief operating officer) is committed to the customer experience from initial sale through to churn. They build strategies and scalable service operations that enable high-quality experiences. They’re eager to harmonize and scale processes to convert the service organization from a cost-center to a revenue generating unit.

Find the Right Service Role for You

Ready to make the most of a career in customer service? Check out the Service Career Path on Trailhead where you can hone critical skills, learn about essential customer service tools, and collaborate with other customer service professionals. Then, join the Serviceblazer Community and become a #ServiceStar.

Resources

• Trailhead: Service Operations Analyst Career Path
• Trailhead: Field Service Leader Career Path
• Trailhead: Service Leader Career Path
• Trailhead: Chief Customer Officer Career Path
• Join the Service Trailblazer Community, and become a #ServiceStar