Customer Service Job Roles First to Be Filled in the Recovery

I recently read an interesting blog post over on the Management Blog about which job roles will recover the fastest out of a recession and thought that commenting on this would make a nice follow up to my recent blog post on “Customer Service Job Roles Hit Badly by 'Credit Crunch”.

The author Kate Burrows comments, “As the economy begins to recover, technology, customer service and sales jobs will be the first to be filled as hiring managers consider customer service the most critical function for their organisation's success.” The survey was carried out by by International Communications Research during the period April 30th to May 31st.
There were over 500 managers and 500 workers that participated in the survey, and 53% of employers expect to hire full-time employees in the next 12 months.

This is promising news for all those unemployed customer service job seekers who unfortunately felt the full force of the credit crunch. To be honest this news doesn’t come as a real surprise to me though. Organisations will know that as we pull out of the recession and more business is up for grabs there is still going to be quite a bit of stiff competition around, with many organisations having experienced a glut in new business for almost 2 years, they’ll be more hungry than ever to close and keep new deals, hence the increase in sales role opportunities also.

So why are customer service job roles right up there in the top 3? Customer service is about delivering the promise, the promise a company commits to as soon as they sign a contract with a client. Therefore, customer service is a critical function within any business. If a business can’t keep their customers happy or even ‘delighted’ then the relationship will be a short one and some organisations need to have a relationship with a customer for many months or even years before that customer becomes a profitable one. I like to view customer service as the sticky tape that holds all the various divisions together and keeps the business functioning as one combined unit. After all it is the customer service advisors and call handlers that are closest to an orgnaisation's customers. They know when their customers are happy or unhappy and they also get direct feedback from the customer as to what they want out of the relationship. As we often hear, it is often our customers that often come up with new ideas for new products or service improvements and it is the customer service team that gather this information and feed it back to 'Marketing' and the R&D department.

But customer service isn’t just about keeping the customer happy. They also play a more strategic role in the sense that they also ‘shield’ the production team and fee earners in the business from having to deal with routine enquiries from customers. Just imagine how many billable / production hours per day a fee earner would lose if they were to field those types of calls and email enquiries themselves?

Providing outstanding customer service is one key area that can help a business to truly differentiate itself from its competitors, and this will have a direct impact on the bottom line, hence why it’s regarded as one of the most critical areas to focus on when running a business. As they say customers are the lifeblood of any company!