What’s the first step towards making a great hire for your customer service team? You guessed it – writing an amazing customer service rep job description.
This job description is a powerful tool. An honest account of the role you’re hiring for, along with clear and enticing language, will help you attract the right candidates and make successful hires. But, the uses of a customer service representative job description don’t stop there: you can consult it when building training programs, conducting skills gap analysis, or even restructuring your organization.
So, ready to learn how to write a job description for customer service? Here’s a step-by-step guide along with examples and four tips (plus a complete template for you to use at the end):
Please note: The screenshots that appear in this article were sourced purely as examples of job descriptions. Acquire isn’t affiliated or collaborating with any of the companies mentioned, nor does it promote the jobs referenced.
1. Summarize the role first
Do this exercise before you start writing the actual job description. Think about what the purpose of this role is and what the main duties and responsibilities are. Consider what existing team members do, and what skills they possess that make them good at their job.
In this phase, start thinking about the Ideal Candidate Profile (ICP) for customer service reps. What are the hard and soft skills a candidate needs to do this job at the highest level? Do they need a university degree or would a high school degree do? To determine all this, you could:
- Look at your company’s old job descriptions and note what has changed
- Talk to people who already do this job and gather feedback
- Discuss the customer service rep job description with a customer service team leader (if you’re not them writing the job description)
- Take a look at job descriptions posted by your competitors
Once you have this down, write a short intro for the job ad. You could start with “We’re looking for a new addition to our customer service team. Our customer service reps are responsible for [1-2 main duties]. We’re looking for someone who [2-3 main skills].”
Tip: Remember that this part isn’t about creating the portrait of a perfect customer service rep who can do no wrong. This person doesn’t exist and you’ll have a hard time evaluating real candidates against that idolized version. So, make sure your ICP is realistic.
2. List duties and requirements
Do this in bullet form since it’s easier for you to write and for candidates to read and understand. Draw from the job analysis you conducted as part of step one. Write the list using active voice and avoid jargon that doesn’t provide useful info about the job (e.g. work in a dynamic, fast-paced environment). Here are some general duties of the customer service rep:
- Answer calls, messages, or social media posts by customers as quickly as possible
- Calm disgruntled customers
- Resolve issues with our products or services and escalate to our operations engineers when you’re unable to
- Process orders and give refunds if needed
Depending on the industry and the company, the customer service rep job description might have slight differences. At a call center, the main duties are handling high call volumes and escalating complaints properly. At a hotel, the main duty is to make sure customers enjoy their stay. At yet another business, customer service reps may be more focused on gathering product feedback and making sure customers don’t churn.
Same goes for the skills and education needed. Call centers may not ask their employees to have college degrees, but a tech startup will probably ask for a degree when hiring customer service reps. Determine your own requirements.
Conversely, there are some skills that should always form part of the customer service rep job description. These are:
- Verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to learn fast
- Conflict and stress management
- Familiarity with computers and tech in general
- Good judgment
These skills are good to include in the job ad to give candidates an idea of what you expect from your employees. Evaluate candidates at a later stage against all those skills—perhaps during interviews, or other hiring stages.
You’re building an amazing customer service team. Do you have equally amazing software to support them? Get a demo to learn how Acquire helps your agents provide superior customer service.
Tip: If you don’t know where to start, find a template and tailor it to your business. Make the lists as specific as possible. We have a generic customer service representative job description template at the end of this blog, just for you.
3. Add the ‘About us’ section
Many job descriptions contain ‘About us’ sections that are stuffy, hard-to-read, and full of jargon. Companies that don’t pay attention to this lose opportunities to engage candidates and showcase what makes their company unique.
Take some time to reflect. What’s the company’s mission and vision? Why do people like working there? What has happened recently that’s exciting and shareable? (e.g. latest business growth or a new branch opened). Write this down and then edit your writing: job descriptions are better when they’re clear, concise, enthusiastic, and provide useful information. It’s also important to mention how this specific role fits within the organizational structure and helps achieve your company’s overall goals.
Here’s a short example:
At Acme Inc, our goal is to light up the world with our fireworks: we make the best fireworks in our home country and we’ve recently expanded overseas. Our team just hit the 100-employee mark and we’re still searching for more talented people to join us. That’s why we’re looking for a full-time customer service rep who’ll be stationed at our offices in London. You’ll get to work with our product and operations teams to put out fires (hopefully not literally) and make sure our customers are always satisfied with what we offer.
And here’s an excerpt from a real-life job description:
Tip: Tailor the tone to fit your company’s culture. For example, if you work for a consultancy, chances are the tone will be more formal and serious. But, if you’re hiring for a startup, candidates will expect you to be more approachable and upbeat.
4. Talk about benefits
Some people may choose customer support as a job before they move on to the role that matches their educational background. Whether because of this reason, or because of long hours and tough conditions, turnover is an important issue in customer service (especially in call centers). According to LinkedIn “losing an entry-level employee costs employers 50 percent of that person’s annual salary, and losing a technical or senior-level employee costs employers 125 percent of their annual salary.”
So, if you’re looking for temp employees, be sure to mention it in the customer service rep job description. But, if you’d like to hire for the long-term, pay attention to the benefits you offer.
Start with compensation, and make sure you know the salary range beforehand by researching on sites like Glassdoor or Payscale. If you have access to more granular data via a benefits system, look into those. Compare these salaries with your own hiring budget to determine the range. It’s good to mention that range in the job advert (it’s common practice in countries like the UK) so you attract the right candidates.
Benefits are to do with what your business offers. Mention things like private health insurance, mobile plans, gym memberships, remote work days, free snacks, parking spaces, etc.
Tip: Don’t stop at financial or tangible benefits. Talk about the team you’re hiring for and the culture as well. Mention the names of the team leader and other people the new hire will be working more closely with (with their consent) in order to bring a human touch to the job opportunity. If you also have a diverse and gender-balanced team, or are trying your best to get there, be sure to celebrate your efforts.
5. Customize the customer service representative job description template
Now you have an idea what to look for when hiring a customer service representative and how to write the job description, you can mold a template to save time. Here’s a customer service rep job description template you might want to use:
{About us}
{Our new customer service rep will be the first to listen to a customer when they’re having a problem. You’ll quickly become an expert on our software and the common issues our customers face, so you can resolve them as smoothly as possible. You may often deal with stressed or angry people, but you’ll hold strong and escalate the issue when you can’t solve it.}
Your duties will be:
- {Answer calls and messages from customers and prospects}
- {Ask the right questions to understand the issues customers are facing}
- {Provide solutions and guide the customer through to resolution}
- {Escalate to your team leader or operations team when needed}
- {File conversations and complaints in our customer service platform}
- {Gather feedback on our product and services}
- {Ensure customers have a pleasant experience with customer service even when they face problems with our product}
To do all this, you should have:
- High school diploma
- Experience in a customer-facing role
- Tech-savviness and the ability to understand technology quickly
- Communication skills
- Conflict management skills and ability to remain calm under pressure
- Organizational abilities
- Stress management
What will you get working in this role?
The salary range for this role is currently [$..... to $.....] and we’ll determine the final compensation based on experience and skills. We also offer:
- Private medical and dental insurance
- 2 days work from home per week
- Free snacks and drinks at our offices every day
- A company laptop and high-tech equipment
You’ll also like working here because of our relaxed and fun culture. We have no dress code (unless you’re in meetings with customers) and you’ll get to meet a friendly and talented bunch of people made up of 10 different nationalities. We have parties every now and then to celebrate our hard work, and you’ll find many of us putting that brand new coffee machine to good use. This is a place where you can learn and develop, both with help from your colleagues and thanks to our generous training budget. So, if that all sounds good to you, go ahead and apply!
Tip: Add, delete, or modify this customer service representative job description template to match your company’s unique needs and personality. Avoid posting this to job boards as is because candidates can tell when job ads are generic rather than representative of the company.