Customer Service Representative: What is the cost of hiring?
2025-10-0134580.0063417.66110000.00YEARLY
Customer Service Representative: What is the cost of hiring?
As of April 2022, the average number of jobseekers per customer service representative jobs in Australia is 37.
a customer service representative: What is the cost of hiring?
As of April 2022, the average number of jobseekers per customer service representative jobs in Australia is 37.
Why hire a customer service representative?
Hiring a customer service representative can make a huge difference to your business and increase your customer satisfaction and retention figures. A skilled customer service representative will help your business make a good impression on customers, handle front-line tasks and stay patient and organised under pressure.
Contributions of a great customer service representative:
- Makes your customers feel valued and understood thanks to a high level of emotional intelligence
- Helps the business by being proactive and solving problems, which boosts customer loyalty
- Knows your company’s products and services and is always willing to learn more
Deciding between a full-time vs freelance customer service representative
Customer service representatives can be hired full-time or on a freelance basis. If you decide you want to have your customer care team in-house, it’ll be easier for them to become familiar with your products and services and get to know colleagues from other departments. Having your customer service rep in the office can also be useful in case of problems that need to be escalated when they can just walk over and speak to colleagues in the relevant department to resolve the issue for the customer.
Freelance customer service representatives, on the other hand, have the flexibility to work from home and may be able to work a range of different hours, including nights if required, as they don’t need to travel to and from the office. You won’t need to set up a dedicated workspace in the office either, saving you resources. Thanks to modern technology, customer service jobs can be performed from anywhere in the world as long as there is a telephone line.
What are the different types of customer service representative?
When hiring a customer service representative, it’s important to know exactly what type of professional you want to hire. Customer service can take many forms, and roles include the following:
- Call centre agent: Responds to phone and email enquiries from customers, proactively updates customers, records customer complaints, and can work from a call centre or remotely from home.
- Client services coordinator: Ensures all back-office tasks are completed; responsibilities can include order processing and follow-up with suppliers, coordinating services, resolving customer complaints, tracking deliveries and monitoring the progress of installations.
- Customer service manager: Oversees the customer service team, trains customer service representatives and ensures quality targets are met.
- Customer support technician: Troubleshoots technical problems and helps customers with IT-related issues.
Where to find a customer service representative
To find the right customer service representative for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:
- Promote internally: Advertise the role in-house; an
employee
from another department (like administration or data entry) may be looking for a new challenge, and you’ll have the advantage that they’re already familiar with your business!
- Attend networking events: Local business networking events are a great opportunity to get the word out about your vacancy; a fellow business owner may be able to recommend the perfect customer service candidate.
- Offer internships and training: Invite young
talent
to join your company as interns and offer them quality training; the right candidates may stay on after their internship.
- University career events: Attend university open days or career events to showcase your company; some students may be looking for a freelance job to support their studies, and others may want to join your organisation full-time after they graduate.
Post your job online: Try posting your customer service representative job on Indeed to find and attract quality customer service representative candidates.
Skills to look for in a great customer service representative
A great customer service representative candidate will have the following skills and attributes as well as work experience that reflects:
- excellent communication skills, both when dealing with customers and when liaising with other in-house departments
- an ability to multi-task and work under pressure
- a friendly and approachable manner, and an ability to empathise with the customer
- a solution-oriented and proactive approach
- resilience when faced with challenges or customer complaints
Writing a customer service representative job description
A thoughtful description is important for finding qualified customer service representative candidates. A customer service representative job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities and the required and preferred skills for the position.
When writing your job description for a customer service representative, consider including some or all of the following keywords to strengthen the visibility of your job posting. These are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on customer service representative jobs, according to Indeed data:
- customer service
- customer service representative
- retail
- call centre
- team member
- call centre representative
- customer service officer
- work remotely
Interviewing customer service representative candidates
Strong candidates for customer service representative positions will be confident answering questions regarding:
- qualities a good customer service representative needs
- ability to work under pressure and multi-task
- how to deal with difficult customers
- awareness of what makes good customer service
- how to listen and communicate effectively
Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of customer service representative interview questions for examples (with sample answers).
*Indeed provides this information as a courtesy to users of this site. Please note that we are not your recruiting or legal advisor, we are not responsible for the content of your job descriptions, and none of the information provided herein guarantees performance.
