Picture Godzilla stomping across the skyline of Tokyo. That’s AI disrupting the workplace lately.
Jobs are disappearing as automation tackles them faster and cheaper than humans can. More than one-third of the skills necessary to thrive in a job today are projected to change, and half of what we learned five years ago is irrelevant today.
Put plainly: our skills gap will continue increasing. Meanwhile, Bill (yes, Gates) says we’re still underestimating the changes coming our way in the next ten years. There’s a race to keep up with AI and the rapid pace of tech innovation.
But it’s not all “double, double, toil and trouble” just yet. Jobs requiring social or creative skills have actually increased. Why? Because AI can’t replace them.
There’s a rising demand for emotional intelligence, creativity, and critical thinking at work. Turns out it’s tough teaching a robot the social nuances of customer care.
Here’s why working in remote customer service is good for your career and your C.V.
Build digital chops
Though unfairly viewed as a job where people shout at you on the phone, customer service is actually a fantastic place to be right now.
WFH agent technology is the only technology to enter the Plateau of Productivity in 2021. The plateau highlights technologies that have become mainstream after being adopted by multiple organizations. This means companies are investing heavily in the cutting-edge software required for remote work.
Want to stay current with your technology skills? You’ll attain yoga-guru levels of software agility as a WFH agent. All thanks to the innovative communication systems and tech tools you’ll regularly work with on the job.
Develop transferable skills
Working in remote customer service is a great way to add important transferable skills to your CV. These skills boost your professional growth and help you do any job well, regardless of role or industry. Transferable skills are highly valued by HR in making hiring decisions.
In Monster’s 2021 Future of Work survey, recruiters picked teamwork, critical thinking, and flexibility as the most important soft skills in new hires. These vital skills are interconnected and work best in tandem with each other.
Let’s take a closer look.
Interpersonal skills
Your job in customer care involves handling people. You’ll learn to work together in a team, developing your people skills from daily customer interactions. Learning how to treat people with respect and consideration is a life hack for both professional and personal growth.
(It leads to happier customers too.)
Working in remote customer service also opens you up to diversity. Customers, colleagues, and supervisors can contact you from any part of the world. That’s a rich exposure to diverse backgrounds, personalities, and areas of expertise.
Developing your interpersonal skills and learning teamwork is important if you want to be a leader someday. After all, the best leaders intrinsically understand the deeper dynamics of working with people.
Analytical skills
Customer service experience can sharpen your problem-solving skills to a razor’s edge.
People will reach out to you when the normal product experience has gone awry at their end. And 63% of consumers expect brands to understand their unique needs and expectations.
What’s surprising is how many different issues can crop up when you’re in the hot seat. You need critical thinking to evaluate each challenge and reach logical solutions. And you need to do this fast, as customers expect quick resolutions.
The ability to solve problems quickly and tactfully is a vital skill in any workplace. You’ll have every opportunity to perfect this in customer service.
Adaptability
The workplace today is in constant flux. In fact, while you’ve been reading this, 78 new business trends just popped up. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But the truth is, change is constant and hiring adaptable learners is like finding the Holy Grail.
De’Onn Griffin, research director at Gartner, said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
Recruiters look for people who are flexible and think outside the box. Who wouldn’t want to hire someone great at creative solutions and enthusiastic about upskilling?
Working in customer care is perfect for teaching you how to wear many hats:
- Problem-solving customer issues
- Onboarding and training new agents
- Creating documentation from product knowledge
- Being in a direct feedback loop for market research
- Gaining new software proficiencies
- Perfecting visual, verbal, and written communication skills
It’s all in a day’s work.
Learn to be a leader
Companies prefer hiring leaders with high levels of emotional intelligence. That’s because the primary cause for leadership failure is linked to a deficiency in this ability. It’s employees with high levels of EI that make wonderful leaders, as they excel at human interaction.
Working in remote customer service helps you develop this core aspect of your personality.
Empathy and effective communication are valuable qualities that let you respond to social cues appropriately. Hone these skills and read between the lines to gauge your customer’s mood and tone.
Emotionally competent agents have higher ratings in customer satisfaction and customers show a 78% return rate of business even after a mistake.
Emotional Intelligence isn’t just a quality that can help you become a great leader. It’s an essential human understanding of the world that AI simply can’t replicate.
Despite what Pixar led us to believe, real bots have a long way to go before they learn the intricacies of the human connection.
Where the future lies
Once treated as the “step-child” of a corporation, customer service is transforming rapidly in the post-pandemic era.
Today, nearly 8 in 10 work-from-home representatives find their jobs more strategic than two years ago.
Forrester predicts customer service will provide vital business insights and agents will be critical in overall business strategy for customer experience. Top performing companies are investing in new technologies to scale up and innovate their remote CX service.
And with close to 3 million customer service jobs in 2020, the employment rate is projected to grow at 5 percent before 2026. Business, as they say, is booming.
By now you know if this is the job for you. The water’s warm, the weather’s perfect, and we’re always around to welcome you. So come on in.
