Career Trends: Customer Service Representatives

Customer service representatives interact with customers to handle complaints, process orders, and provide information about an organization’s products and services.

Although customer service representatives are employed in nearly every industry, many work in telephone call centers, credit and insurance agencies, banks, and retail stores. About 1 in 5 worked part time in 2014.

Customer service representatives typically need a high school diploma and are trained on the job. They should be good at communicating with people and have some experience using computers.

Employment of customer service representatives is projected to grow 10 percent from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations. Overall job opportunities should be good. Candidates with good customer-service skills and who have experience using computer software applications should have the best job prospects.

This occupation supported 2,362,800 jobs in 2012 and 2,581,800 jobs in 2014, reflecting an increase of 9.3%. In 2012, this occupation was projected to increase by 12.6% in 2022 to 2,661,400 jobs. As of 2014, to keep pace with prediction, the expected number of jobs was 2,422,500, compared with an observed value of 2,581,800, 6.6% higher than expected. This indicates current employment trends are much better than the 2012 trend within this occupation. In 2014, this occupation was projected to increase by 10.7% in 2024 to 2,834,800 jobs. Linear extrapolation of the 2012 projection for 2022 results in an expected number of 2,721,100 jobs for 2024, 4.0% lower than the 2014 projection for 2024. This indicates expectations for future employment trends are better than the 2012 trend within this occupation.