5 Customer Service Jobs for College Grads to Keep Their Eye On

5 Customer Service Jobs for College Grads to Keep Their Eye On was originally published on College Recruiter.

Ashley Verrill

Ashley Verrill of Software Advice

Customer service has always been a great field for recent college graduates seeking entry-level employment. Most positions only require candidates to have used a phone, and be able to sound empathetic and patient. But the industry is evolving in such a way that new skills are becoming important – skills that could give applicants right out of college a leg-up from their veteran counterparts.

A recent Forrester report showed that customers increasingly opt for digital-based channels when they contact support. This includes avenues such as live chat, social media and mobile Web. As a result, companies need support reps that are familiar with using such tools. Candidates right out of school are more likely to have used and learned about all of the latest technologies.

But this doesn’t just mean candidates need to have used Facebook, or a smartphone. This trend toward digital contact channel utilization will affect the roles in the support organization in a variety of ways. Companies will need writers, coders and possibly even mobile app developers in the customer service department. Software Advice consulted with staffing experts to compile a list of five jobs they see emerging in the next five years.

Self-Service Content Strategist

The individual in this role would continually mine for popular topics in call center notes, as well as review Web analytics data to assess which articles in the self-service community garner the most traffic.

At the same time, they would also moderate content created by the customer community and facilitate the sharing of this user-generated material.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) Developer

The person in this role would help ensure the right answer is found no matter how or where the question is asked–whether it’s typed in a search box on a webpage, in a chat session, or spoken to an interactive voice response (IVR) system. This requires sophisticated algorithms that can process natural language to find the answer.

While most companies will deploy off-the-shelf or open-source NLP technology, the NLP Developer will need to make substantial configurations to apply it to their company’s specific use cases and content. They would also need to constantly analyze query success rates to identify subject areas that still need refining.

Social Service Success Coordinator

The Social Service Success Coordinator would ensure social customer service efficiency, while keeping an eye out for opportunities to market support interactions. In order to respond effectively, companies have to use social listening technology. This person would work to refine keyword identifiers that tell these systems what signals a customer service message.

If the contact center suddenly gets an influx of calls about a particular product, for example, the coordinator would want to start listening for combinations of that word and “help,” “broken,” “angry” and so on. If a Twitter user responded with a glowing “thank you, I will tell my friends!” that person might handoff the interaction to marketing for promotional uses.

Mobile Customer Service App Manager

The Mobile Customer Service App Manager would act much like a product manager exclusively for the customer service mobile application. They would work with internal or external developers to optimize the user experience for all of the company’s customers.

If analytics showed one feature is used more than another, for example, they might try featuring it more prominently on the app home screen. Or maybe they’d work with the NLP Developer to refine speech recognition for that function.

Virtual Call Center Director

The individual in this role would oversee the virtual call center — a network of customer service agents that work off-site (typically from home). This person would decide when and how to interact with these individuals, monitor their performance, and adjust the size of the team as needed. During peak communication cycles, for example, the Virtual CSR Manager might increase the number of agents on duty.

The Virtual Call Center Director would also consistently comb through key performance metrics to identify weak spots. If they noticed one remote agent lagging behind their cohorts, they could start monitoring calls and provide additional training.

About Ashley Verrill
Ashley Verrill is a market analyst and writes reviews for the Software Advice website. She has spent the last six years reporting and writing business news and strategy features. Her work has appeared in myriad publications including Inc., Upstart Business Journal, the Austin Business Journal and the North Bay Business Journal. Before joining Software Advice in 2012, she worked in sales management and advertising. She is a University of Texas graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

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