Customer Service Representative: Guide to Roles & Responsibilities

Whether it’s a bug in your product, a billing issue, or just about any problem, a support agent takes ownership and ensures a smooth and optimal experience for the customer. The support rep also works closely with teams from different departments to make sure swift action is taken to get a particular issue sorted.

Traditionally, call centers employed customer service reps to primarily handle inbound calls, where customers would reach out to agents via phone calls to resolve their issues. However, in recent times, with the rise of more digital channels of communication and with customers valuing their overall experience with a brand rather than just product quality, customer service as a function is gaining more prominence.

Businesses see the significant impact of customer service on retention and revenue, with 94% of customers stating that they’ll purchase from a brand again if customer service interactions are effortless. This elevates the role of customer service professionals across various industries, including e-commerce, healthcare, travel, banking, and insurance companies, as the onus of crafting effortless customer service experiences lies with service reps.

Duties and responsibilities of a customer service representative

Now that you have a fair understanding of what a customer service rep does, let’s dive deeper into their responsibilities and objectives.

A customer service representative should be able to interact with a customer and immediately get the context of their problem. Support agents should have sound knowledge of the product/service, which will help them suggest a solution to the customer right away. If the customer complaint is beyond the immediate scope of the support rep, they should learn to escalate the problem to the right internal team(s) and follow up with them regularly for updates on the progress made to resolve the complaint.

Here’s a look at the key responsibilities of a service rep.

1. Take ownership of customer issues

Customer service reps must take ownership of the customer’s problem and be the single point of contact for all inquiries related to the troubleshooting procedure, the expected resolution time, and updates on the progress made.

2. Troubleshoot problems and drive resolutions

It’s important for a service rep to follow a customer-first attitude and leave no stone unturned in giving customers the best possible experience. Once a support ticket is assigned to them, they need to research all possible ways to troubleshoot the problem and quickly come up with a solution.

3. Escalate unresolved issues to relevant internal teams

A lot of times in customer support, there are issues that are highly technical or beyond the scope of what a service rep can handle on the spot. For such cases, the support agent needs to make sure that the problem is being communicated to the right internal teams and that they take appropriate action to resolve it.

4. Collect prompt and accurate customer feedback

The work of a support rep does not end at just resolving a customer issue. They also need to follow up with the customer, find out if the solution actually worked, and take note of the customer’s suggestions on what can potentially improve their experience.

5. Document knowledge as solution articles

The solution to every customer problem provides a valuable learning experience to service reps. They should be able to document this knowledge in the form of help content or solution articles so that the same problems don’t occur in the future.

6. Master the use of a help desk software

All of the above tasks can be made easier if your company is using a dedicated customer support software. Your support agents should be able to quickly pick up the functionalities of the helpdesk and resolve customer problems in a more streamlined manner.

What is the difference between Customer Service Representative and Customer Service Associate?

The terms "Customer Service Representative" and "Customer Service Associate" are often used interchangeably, and there is no universally accepted definition that clearly distinguishes the two roles. However, in some contexts, there can be subtle differences in the job titles.

One difference could relate to the level of experience: Some organizations may use the term "Customer Service Associate" for entry-level positions, while "Customer Service Representative" may denote a slightly more senior or experienced role within the customer service department. The representative might handle more complex issues or have additional responsibilities compared to an associate. Another difference might involve scope of responsibilities. For instance, a Customer Service Representative could have a broader range of duties and responsibilities compared to a Customer Service Associate. Representatives might be involved in activities such as handling escalated customer complaints, providing training or mentoring to associates, or taking on additional administrative tasks.

Different organizations tend to have different hierarchies and, as such, some organizations may put the customer service associate role higher than the customer service rep role.

What is the difference between Customer Service Representative and Customer Success Representative?

The roles of a customer service representative and a customer success representative have distinct focuses and responsibilities within a company's customer-facing operations.

In the table below, you’ll find a clear distinction between customer service reps and customer success reps.

Customer Service Representative

A customer service representative’s primary objective is to understand the customer’s problem and troubleshoot it with an optimal and effective solution.

Customer service processes focus on short-term customer goals and do not directly impact revenue and other long-term objectives. Some highlights of their functions are:

A customer service team’s underlying focus is on problem solving in the short term.
Support roles generally fall under conflict resolution, responding to tickets, answering phone calls from struggling customers, and responding to all customer concerns.
Customer support is measured by factors like speed and quality of help received.
Some of the most important support metrics include average response time, first call resolution, customer satisfaction rating, and net promoter score.

Customer Success Representative

A customer success representative’s primary focus is to empower customers to succeed with your product or service in the long term.

Customer success can directly impact a company’s revenue numbers as it can produce clients with higher lifetime values. The key features of the customer success rep role are:

Customer success teams are focused on helping customers achieve greater value and are genuinely seeking to improve their business.
They generate more downstream impacts such as bigger returns on investment, more reselling, better retention, and higher order values.
Customer success teams should target their efforts on the account level, taking an almost account-based marketing approach to customer success.
Key performance indicators of customer success teams are lifetime value, upsell and cross-sell rate, customer churn, and net promoter score.

When should you scale your customer support team?

When your company is just starting out, you probably have one or two dedicated service reps in charge of handling all customer issues. However, as your business grows, this setup will no longer be feasible and you will have to start looking for ways to scale your support team.

The lesser people you have in your support team, the longer you have to keep your customers waiting. As a result, your customer base will become increasingly more frustrated with the slow response times, which can consequently hamper your company’s progress.

It’s the right time to scale your support team and start hiring more support reps when:

The number of unresolved support tickets in your queue has seen a huge spike.
Your company’s CSAT rating seems to be witnessing a sudden decline.
Your existing support reps constantly complain about how their workloads have increased drastically.
Your once-loyal customers are becoming increasingly impatient and expecting a more prompt/immediate resolution of issues.
Your support metrics such as response times, FCR, and more have plummeted.
Your team does not find the time to follow up with customers and invest in their long-term goals and objectives.

Customer service representative job description template

If you’ve decided to expand your customer service team, then a good job description helps you set the expectations for the role and attract the right people to your support team. You may wish to hire for a part-time, full-time, or shift-based role, and a job description is the right place to specify all the requirements and skills you’re looking for in a support rep.

Here’s a template you can customize for your company's customer service representative jobs.

Job title:

Mention the exact role you’re hiring for. A customer support entry-level role could be ‘Customer service associate’, ‘Customer service representative’, or ‘Customer support representative’.

Job summary:

Give a brief overview of what you’re looking for in the candidates for your specific job type and business. Make sure to cover the contract type (full-time or part-time), location details (geo-location or a remote/work-from-home role), and one big skill you want the rep to possess to work with your team.

Example:

We’re looking for a customer-focused, positive customer service associate who can take end-to-end ownership of assigned customer requests and deliver prompt resolution primarily through mail and chat channels. This is a full-time, on-site role based out of Singapore.

Responsibilities:

List the primary duties of the customer service agent in this section.

Sample list of responsibilities for a customer service associate:

Handle customer inquiries via email and chat, giving prompt answers to customer questions.
Provide knowledgeable help to customers and go the extra mile in providing the correct details to customer queries.
Adhere to Service Level Agreement (SLA) deadlines in resolving customer complaints quickly and effectively.
Collaborate with internal stakeholders such as the product and payments team for faster resolutions.
Identify and escalate customer requests to managers when there’s a complex issue.

Qualifications:

Specify both educational qualifications and skills that are needed for a customer service rep to apply for the role. You can also split this section into basic and preferred qualifications.

Sample list of qualifications and skills:

Minimum qualification: High-school diploma. Graduates in any stream can also apply.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills (English).
Good documentation skills. Proficiency in using Microsoft Excel and Word is an added advantage.
Sound problem-solving skills to find the root cause of customer issues.

The tools a customer service rep uses

A help desk software

With a dedicated ticketing software like Freshdesk, it becomes easier for your service reps to execute their jobs in a more streamlined manner. They can access customer requests from multiple communication channels through a unified database, automate repetitive tasks, and ensure deadlines are being adhered to.

A CRM solution

To access important contextual information about a customer, the service rep will require access to a CRM software. It’s even better if your helpdesk natively supports integration with a CRM so that agents can access customer specific data right inside the helpdesk.

Excel sheets

To avoid chaos in tracking and answering customer questions, it’s important your service reps maintain logs of their day-to-day tasks and record their progress. Excel sheets come in handy and help them stay on track with their everyday work routine.

Freshdesk features for customer service representatives

Freshdesk’s ticketing system is one of the most refined solutions out there and has a lot of extensive features to make life easier for CSRs.

Here’s a look at what your support reps can do in Freshdesk:

Prioritize work with custom ticket views

Support agents can find out which tickets need their attention the most by creating customized ticket views. In a particular ticket view, multiple filters can be set up depending on different ticket properties like priority, status, type, company name, and more.

Learn more about customized ticket views in Freshdesk

Improve efficiency by automating repetitive tasks

Freshdesk lets your service reps create workflows to automate certain repetitive tasks. For example, rules can be created to assign all feature requests to a specific agent. These workflows can be executed instantly.

Learn more about automations in Freshdesk

Save replies to common questions as reusable templates

To save time on responding to common questions, Freshdesk lets support reps create canned responses. Your agents can insert canned responses in one click, without spending time typing manual replies. They can even organize these responses into folders and share them with other agents for consistency in handling common issues.

Learn more about canned responses in Freshdesk

Forward tickets with a single click

Freshdesk makes it easy to forward tickets to third parties and external teams with a single click. Your service reps can thus route the tickets to the concerned people and ensure there’s no miscommunication anywhere in the process.

Learn more about ticket forwarding in Freshdesk

Improve productivity with agent collision detection

Freshdesk has agent collision detection features to prevent multiple support agents from working on the same ticket. An agent will be notified whenever there’s another agent viewing or typing a reply on the same ticket. The agent can then quickly move on to other tickets without having to needlessly do repetitive work.

Learn more about agent collision detection in Freshdesk

Unify access to customer information

Freshdesk is tightly integrated with multiple third-party applications such as CRMs, email marketing tools, and/or team collaboration software. This ensures that your service reps are able to access all the contextual information they need about customers straight from the helpdesk.

Learn more about the Freshdesk Marketplace

Frequently asked questions about customer support representatives

What is the role of a customer service representative?

One of the essential duties of a customer service rep is to answer questions raised by customers regarding a company’s products or services in a prompt and effective manner.

Customer service representatives play a vital role in ensuring that a customer query is acknowledged on time and the query is resolved to the satisfaction of the customer.

Who does a customer service representative work with?

A customer service rep deals with a variety of customer inquiries. Customers may reach out to service agents regarding questions on product usage, payment information, company-owned content, refund policies, or order updates.

Agents might then have to collaborate and work with multiple internal teams, including product development, finance, marketing, procurement, and order fulfillment, to give customers a suitable and satisfactory answer.

Is customer service a good career?

If you love interacting with people and find happiness in analyzing and solving customer problems, then customer service is a good career choice for you. Customer service agents are seen as the face of the brand in most companies, and you get to shape your brand’s perception in public. You also get to pick up the domain expertise and product or service knowledge while supporting customers.

Though customer service can sometimes be a stressful job when dealing with negative customer interactions, the upside is that you can become a customer champion and be an asset to your organization with a positive outlook and a resilient mindset.

What does the career path of a customer service agent look like?

A customer service professional begins their career in customer service with entry-level roles like a customer service associate or a customer service representative. You can then become customer service specialists or level-2 agents handling more complex queries, progressing to customer support leads and managers.

Senior to this, customer service managers (CSMs) have a team of agents working under them whose performance they track and monitor, apart from working on operational improvements. CSMs can move up the ladder to become directors or VPs of customer service, strategizing and aligning internal teams to deliver excellent customer service.

Explore the different career paths in customer service.