Customer Service Assistant Jobs

Customer service assistant jobs can be found within a variety of organisations and some customer service assistants jobs can quickly progress to customer services team leaders or managers. Although a customer service assistant job duties vary according to their employer's business, the work of a customer service assistant involves dealing directly with customers and acting as a link between the customer and other departments in the organisation.

A customer service assistant job may be to work with customers face to face, while some customer service assistant jobs (such as contact centre employees) deal with customers on the phone. Some companies have specialist customer service assistant jobs (such as those employed on IT helpdesks) who do most of their work by email. Some jobs require customer service assistants to use two or three of these methods of communication.

Customer service assistant jobs will be the first point of contact a customer has with an organisation, so it is essential to create a good impression. The work of a customer service assistant may be demanding and sometimes very challenging.

A customer service assistant job may involve:

• answering customer enquiries or passing them on to the appropriate department
• giving information and helping to solve customer problems
• selling products and taking orders
• arranging services for customers, for example, booking hotel rooms or arranging car hire
• dealing with complaints
• taking information from customers and entering it on a database
• taking payments by cash, cheque or credit card
• issuing refunds, if appropriate
• making sure that the customer's experience is a positive one.

Customer service assistant jobs can quickly progress to a customer services managers post where they would be responsible for managing a team of customer services assistants.

Skills and personal qualities

A customer services assistant should have excellent communication skills, be polite, confident and friendly, understand the needs of customers and  be able to remain patient, calm and polite in difficult situations.

A customer service assistant should have problem-solving skills, be flexible and quick thinking, be able to follow instructions, be good at teamwork and able to work on their own initiative.  In addition customer sercice assistant jobs should be accurate and pay attention to detail, even when under pressure, have good numeracy and computer skills and be smart and well-groomed if working face to face with customers.

Hours and environment

A full-time customer service assistant job will usually work around 37 hours a week, but actual working hours vary from employer to employer. Customer service assistants may work on a rota or shift pattern to cover early mornings, days, evenings, weekends and bank holidays, and in some organisations, a 24-hour service. Part-time work is often available for customer services assistant jobs, and occasionally at management level.

Salaries for a customer service assistant jobs may be around £10,000  - £18,000 a year.