The chances of you being greeted with a warm smile and a joyous attitude when you enter an establishment or restaurant are unbelievably high. Your phone breaks down, and you ask for help on the customer service hotline, and somebody greets you with an upbeat tone and a readiness to help. You inquire about a product, and another person enthusiastically tells you about it. You order a coffee from your favorite coffee joint, and the barista and cashier serve the coffee as warm as their smiles. You order burgers and fries in a fast food restaurant, and every employee you meet tries their best to keep up a good attitude.
Now, imagine all of these people dealing with different types of personalities, day in and day out. The customer service hotline talks to angry people, frustrated customers, and clueless individuals who are calling for a problem that takes common sense to solve. Before they even get to these things, they must first apply for the job. Using a specific customer service resume and soft skills that could deal with a multitude of people, being an employee in the customer service industry isn’t easy at all.
What is customer service?
As was previously discussed, the term “customer service” is easily thrown around without exactly having its specific definition. In essence, customer service is the direct one-on-one interaction between a consumer making a purchase and a representative of the company selling it. In order for sales to rise up and profit to be taken, the business companies try their hardest to sell you their product or service. In the middle between them and you are the people who fall under customer service. Let’s take a look at some examples of customer service and really realize just how hard their jobs are.
Food industry
The food industry is one of the biggest markets that exist today and will probably stay just that for the times to come. Specifically, fast food, restaurant, and beverage businesses with places that let people eat on-site have a lot of customer service going on. From cleaning the plates, preparing your food, serving it to your table, and cleaning up after you leave, people who serve consumers – customers, are present. Of course, horrible tales of bad customers and rude guests are always present and float up to the local news every now and then. That is only accounting for those that made it in the news, not the ones who appear more frequently than we could ever imagine. Watching a rude customer yell out an employee who obviously didn’t do anything wrong and seeing the employee take it all already makes a lot of us angry. Now, imagine these employees facing these kinds of people day in and day out.
Customer support
The patience of people who troubleshoot and deal with customers who have issues with their devices/products is unparalleled. Ranging from appliances, phones, and online services, these customer care hotlines are what guide the users to have a great experience. Sometimes, talking over the phone to troubleshoot a problem with their computer can take hours, by which a simple fix could have been already done in another scenario. Customer service employees have to deal with this, as this is a part of the business enterprises’ way of keeping brand loyalty.
In conclusion, customer service employees are the backbone of every business company there is. We should always give our appreciation and empathy whenever we see them or talk to them. Let’s make our best efforts to not give them trouble when there’s none and to be polite and patient whenever the opportunity presents itself. Without them, we would have a very difficult and arduous life, far from the comforts that we’re experiencing today.