Telephone Answering Services Look to Hire

Many companies are hiring far in advance when it comes to their telephone answering services

With so many lay-offs in sectors like housing, construction, upper management and even some service industries, there’s one area that looks to be holding steady if not improving despite the poor economy. Customer service representatives like those that work in an inbound call center, an outbound call center and a telephone answering service are always in demand, and apparently that doesn’t appear to be about to change.

In fact, the job of customer service representative ranks at #3 in the governmental Bureau of Labor Statistics’ list of the top 10 jobs that are expected to grow the most in the next 10 years. Insiders expect that the growth will amount to an increase of about 20% by 2018. And there were already 2.3 million CSR jobs available in 2008, so that increase means almost 3 million jobs just in customer service in the next 8 years that will need skilled workers. Places like a telephone answering service and other inbound call center set-ups within companies and outsourced companies will need those workers, and people with some sort of training or experience will be more likely to be hired than those without experience. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers don't just include people who work in an inbound call center. Customer service also means email, chat and website customer service, as more people use these methods of interacting with businesses than ever before. The trend is biggest among those 35 years of age and younger, who make phone calls to businesses 12% less than they did 3 years ago and opt for things like web interaction and emails instead.

And because the Internet is as instant as a phone call in many situations, with online CSRs available, businesses realize just how important good customer service can be to their bottom line. More CSRs hired means more employment, whether at a telephone answering service or one of the other options, and that’s good for the economy. It also has the potential to increase consumer spending on products when they get good customer service and decide to put their faith in a particular company.

With the huge rise in popularity of social media, companies should continue to hire customer service representatives as well as spend time training them well. If a customer had a complaint several years ago, he could make that known through word of mouth, but probably didn’t have the capacity to really cause a problem or affect change. Today, an unhappy customer can make a post on a blog or Twitter about a bad experience, and that information could go viral quite quickly.

Someone who does call an inbound call center for customer service is just as capable of posting online about the experience as someone who used webchat or email to talk to company representatives. The potential damage in this type of social media is clear, but it can also boost a company that gives good customer service and has highly trained inbound call center workers handling customer inquiries. Those are just some of the reasons that customer service jobs are expected to boom over the next several years.