Customer service assistants are usually client facing and therefore have to be professional, have excellent interpersonal skills, have a confident and business like telephone manner and also be very organised with good administration skills.

Through clearlysecretarialjobs.co.uk, job seekers can access all the latest Customer Service jobs in London and across the UK. Search job vacancies for Customer Service Administrators, Claims Handlers, Sales Advisors, Call Centre Operatives and Customer Service Team Leaders.

Job description

In a Customer Service job, you'll be expected to deal with any enquiries a company's customers may have about the company itself or about a specific product offered by that company. This contact with clients will be done either by phone or email or face to face and essentially you are the voice or face of the company and must project a professional image at all times.

Your daily duties will be governed by what type of company you're working for. For instance, you could work for a large retail bank's customer service team based in a call centre. This would involve a high volume of phone calls and you'd be expected to answer basic questions and those of a more technical nature. Or, you could be working as a customer service representative in a retail company and most of your day will be spent dealing with customer queries on a face to face basis.

Whatever the type of customer service role you find yourself in, there are a number of duties you'd be expected to perform on a daily basis. These include:

• Speaking with clients about products or services, answering any questions that may arise
• Handling any customer complaints
• Giving detailed descriptions of the company or any of its products
• Order processing, including credit card transactions
• Processing refunds
• Answering any queries by email or letter
• Updating internal systems with customer details and requests
• General admin duties, filing, photocopying etc

You'll nearly always be based in an office, call centre or retail premises and be expected to work standard, often fixed hours. Longer hours may be necessary during the busiest periods.

You don't need any qualifications to get a job in customer service. Often a good basic level of education and a positive attitude will be enough to get your foot in the door. There are qualifications you can get such as NVQs in Customer Service and as is always the case, obtaining these qualifications will not do your chances any harm.

A potential employer may not be scanning your CV for a list of suitable qualifications though they will be looking for evidence of a set of particular skills. These include:

• Great people skills
• Proficiency in the basic IT skills
• The ability to listen and understand
• Patience and the ability to be cool under pressure
• Being a team player
• Thinking on your feet
• Diplomacy
• Problem solving

Most companies that need customer service staff will have their own systems, products and procedures so it's likely that you'll be required to undergo an extensive training programme before you are let loose on the public. These training programmes are useful in that they give you new skills and experience in using software packages which will only serve to improve your CV.

Salary Information

This is subject to what sort of role you're working in but you could expect a starting salary of £10-14k and with some decent experience you could earn up to £18k. London jobs are the top payers, as is the norm for most office based jobs.

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