Customer service jobs on the rise

Signs of economic recovery are all around us. But we still hear employment is weak and lagging.  So, in the midst of mixed messages, what do we believe?

I’m no economist so I try to keep things simple. One thing I see is the growth in customer service related jobs seems to be increasing.

Our friends at Indeed.com have a service where they display trends in their job listing data.  It allows you to search on any keywords so I entered a few that are relevant to what we talk about here at AmazingServiceGuy.com.

The first was “customer service representative”. They don’t show raw data but their graphs are useful. This one shows the percentage growth in job listing with these keywords over the past 5 years. (Note – this is not the actual number of jobs, just the growth.)

It’s clear that growth bottomed out in January 2009 (going negative, meaning fewer jobs were listed). And now the tide has turned with growth hitting around 15% for this job group.

Next I entered the keywords: “customer service” which broadened the results.  In January 2009 there was still positive growth in these jobs but it was small, just over 5%. Now, though, it’s on a steep climb, with a current measure of about 23%.

Our experience at AmazingServiceGuy is similar. Every month the number of visitors goes up significantly. I won’t suggest this is tied to job growth because these are separate issues. But as companies look to improve customer service, two primary ways to do this are through education and by adding staff. And when companies add staff they often increase their training and development.

What are your thoughts? Do you see an increase or decrease in the job market for customer service (and related) jobs?

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