What does a customer support agent do?
The customer support agent mainly acts as a liaison for the business and customers, assisting with queries such as complaints, errors, orders, cancellations, and billing. They act as a customer-oriented service representative by providing needed information on different products/services and resolve any emerging problems that customers might experience with accuracy and efficiency. They make sure that they provide excellent customer satisfaction. Moreover, the customer support agent must be accommodating, knowledgeable, and articulate when communicating with customers about the business's products and services.
Customer support agent responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real customer support agent resumes:
- Set and manage end user expectations in accord with SLA schedule associate with the determined incident severity.
- Answer eligibility and coverage questions from insurance agents pertaining to Medicare advantage plans and prescription drug plans.
- Recruit, develop and mentore a large proportion of the CRM consulting professionals within the practice.
- Assist in payment inquiries, confirmation of invoice receipts, troubleshoot invoice issues and dispatch cases as appropriate.
- Confer with customers via inbound calls to troubleshoot issues with digital cable and internet service; remotely fixing issues with equipment.
- Brief passengers according to company and FAA requirements in reference to immigration and passport laws and requirements on international trips.
- Provision modems for static and dynamic IP addresses.
- Configure individual user settings and ensure proper connectivity of IP connect POS equipment.
- Provide superior customer service to inbound calls from DirecTV customers regarding their schedule service/install appointment.
Customer support agent skills and personality traits
We calculated that 28% of Customer Support Agents are proficient in Customer Support, Customer Care, and Chat Support. They’re also known for soft skills such as Communication skills, Computer skills, and Interpersonal skills.
We break down the percentage of Customer Support Agents that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Customer Support, 28%
Provided customer support towards customers when handling product liability issues with their mobile devices and washing machines
- Customer Care, 9%
Performed quality monitoring and total customer evaluations of Customer Care calls received by Hewlett-Packard's external and outsource support partners.
- Chat Support, 6%
Handled customer service relations for the Chef'd campaign though phone, email and chat support (no script).
- Customer Interaction, 6%
Create a lifelong engaged relationship with my customers by delivering superior service and quality with every customer interaction.
- Customer Service, 5%
Inspired superior customer service and high performance by training, motivating, and evaluating performance-oriented staff.
- Technical Support, 4%
Set up payment arrangement and processed payments- Technical support and upgraded phones- Changed phone plans- Ensured customer satisfaction
Most customer support agents use their skills in "customer support," "customer care," and "chat support" to do their jobs. You can find more detail on essential customer support agent responsibilities here:
Communication skills. To carry out their duties, the most important skill for a customer support agent to have is communication skills. Their role and responsibilities require that "customer service representatives must be able to provide clear information in writing, by phone, or in person." Customer support agents often use communication skills in their day-to-day job, as shown by this real resume: "provided customer support for uni2 communication service provider. "
Interpersonal skills. This is an important skill for customer support agents to perform their duties. For an example of how customer support agent responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "representatives should be able to create positive interactions with customers." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a customer support agent: "provided excellent communication and interpersonal skills for customer service. ".
Patience. A big part of what customer support agents do relies on "patience." You can see how essential it is to customer support agent responsibilities because "representatives should be patient and polite, especially when interacting with dissatisfied customers." Here's an example of how this skill is used from a resume that represents typical customer support agent tasks: "demonstrated high level of courtesy and patience when effectively helping customer to troubleshoot netflix ready devices. "
Customer-service skills. A commonly-found skill in customer support agent job descriptions, "customer-service skills" is essential to what customer support agents do. Customer support agent responsibilities rely on this skill because "representatives help companies retain customers by professionally answering questions and helping to resolve complaints." You can also see how customer support agent duties rely on customer-service skills in this resume example: "reviewed and analyzed raw sales lead data and created customer profiles for better customer support/sales opportunities. "
Listening skills. Another skill commonly found on customer support agent job descriptions is "listening skills." It can come up quite often in customer support agent duties, since "representatives must listen carefully to ensure that they understand customers in order to assist them." Here's an example from a resume of how this skill fits into day-to-day customer support agent responsibilities: "listened and graded calls of customer service reps for quality assurance. "
The three companies that hire the most customer support agents are:
- SYKES
58 customer support agents jobs
- SITEL22 customer support agents jobs
- Randstad North America, Inc.5 customer support agents jobs
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Compare different customer support agents
Customer support agent vs. Customer engagement specialist
A client engagement specialist is in charge of devising strategies to build positive relationships with clients that will translate to sales. Their responsibilities revolve around performing research and analysis to identify client needs, finding new sales leads and opportunities, and coordinating with team members. They must also reach out to clients through calls, correspondence, or face-to-face interaction to offer products and services, discuss specifications, secure sales, process payments, and perform follow-up calls. Moreover, a client engagement specialist must answer inquiries and address issues and concerns, resolving them promptly and efficiently.
While similarities exist, there are also some differences between customer support agents and customer engagement specialist. For instance, customer support agent responsibilities require skills such as "chat support," "technical support," "provide customer support," and "salesforce." Whereas a customer engagement specialist is skilled in "brand awareness," "appeals," "wine," and "patients." This is part of what separates the two careers.
Customer engagement specialists tend to make the most money working in the health care industry, where they earn an average salary of $48,710. In contrast, customer support agents make the biggest average salary, $33,421, in the finance industry.customer engagement specialists tend to reach similar levels of education than customer support agents. In fact, customer engagement specialists are 2.4% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.4% more likely to have a Doctoral Degree.Customer support agent vs. Customer retention specialist
A customer care coordinator is responsible for providing the highest customer service to customers by responding to their inquiries and resolving their concerns regarding the services and products offered by the company. Customer care coordinators handle complaints by processing replacements and issuing refunds as needed. They also develop techniques to sell services based on customers' needs and specifications to help the business generate more revenues and resources. A customer care coordinator must have excellent communication skills to ensure satisfaction and achieve business objectives.
While some skills are similar in these professions, other skills aren't so similar. For example, resumes show us that customer support agent responsibilities requires skills like "chat support," "technical support," "provide customer support," and "phone calls." But a customer retention specialist might use other skills in their typical duties, such as, "customer loyalty," "customer retention," "upsell," and "strong negotiation."
Average education levels between the two professions vary. Customer retention specialists tend to reach similar levels of education than customer support agents. In fact, they're 0.5% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.4% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Customer support agent vs. Customer care coordinator
A customer care specialist is responsible for assisting the customers with their inquiries and concerns regarding the goods and services offered by the organization. A customer care specialist must be detail-oriented, as well as have excellent communication and time-management skills in responding to the customers' needs while documenting the processes on a specific computer program. Customer care specialists are responsible for processing payments, replacing defective items, and initiating refunds as needed. They must resolve complaints accurately and efficiently to ensure customer satisfaction to keep a good reputation for the organization.
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, customer support agents are more likely to have skills like "chat support," "technical support," "provide customer support," and "salesforce." But a customer care coordinator is more likely to have skills like "home health," "functional mobility," "patients," and "service calls."
Customer care coordinators make a very good living in the finance industry with an average annual salary of $45,066. On the other hand, customer support agents are paid the highest salary in the finance industry, with average annual pay of $33,421.Most customer care coordinators achieve a similar degree level compared to customer support agents. For example, they're 1.2% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree, and 0.1% more likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Customer support agent vs. Customer care specialist
Types of customer support agent
Updated January 8, 2025
