The general perception of a customer service person is; a certain staff at the end of an organization’s ‘customer care lines’ resolving complaints and generally giving guidelines to a product or service. Well, that has changed. The customer service industry have evolved and grown beyond the brick and mortar call and respond activity in service, customer service have now become the souls of businesses, organizations and ventures.

A recent post on waacsp social media handle came up thus:

“Customer Service is the difference between...

Life and death

Profit and loss

Success and failure

That’s how strategic the service industry have become since the turn of the century.

Decades past, job description for a customer service officer could come with this basic description:   ‘ presentable, good voice and nice tonation’  nowadays the requirement comes as with every other profession: ‘minimum of XYZ year’s of experience in the health industry’ or ‘have previous working experience in the aviation sector’.... what does this shift indicates? An intentional search of suitable candidates with required skills set and direct experience in the first industry of employ.

So majorly, customer service professionals are expected to come ‘specialized’ little wonder at WAACSP, there are fields for specialization and industry. This makes for targeted recruitment for the organization and the candidates. In the HR world where organizations are cutting cost, personnel training being a major fall of the cost cutting measures, it creates an avenue for companies to recruit who comes in today and hits the ground running same day.

So what does this translates?  The customer service profession is a professional setting and it’s a key aspect of career development for any career minded person be you in the financial, health, FMCG, Sales & Marketing, Security, Administration etc, it is recommended one to have or acquire a professional certification in customer service, this adds to your field and improves your stay-ability in your industry. Consider this; In America, all call operators on first responders/medical emergency re-routed 911 calls are first health professionals before venturing into call centre operators, lots of lives have been saved owing to the first responders knowledge of the condition that was called in for and offered first aid measures while the ambulance was on its way, a first responders chat with a 9 year old girl who called in after her pregnant mom fell off the stairs and how she was put through on how to administer CPR and check her breathing and pulse was widely reported in the US and the incident a case study and social media sensation. On the other hand, the Nigerian centre for disease control (NCDC) came under a lot of criticism during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown as their call centre responders where not specific, detailed and assuring in their response to enquiries from members of the public, the first reason one could adduce to failure in quality of service could be lack of industry knowledge, lack of adequate knowledge of product and in adequate training. This could prove costly (although no data to back this up)

In a changing job landscape, job cuts, Human Machine Collaborations (HMC’s) adding a professional certification in customer service becomes more imperative. Aside the service culture being a way of life, there will always be a distinguishing factor in the marketplace.

October each year is acclaimed the world over as customer Service month, and part of WAACSP responsibility is to train and bring more professionals into the service industry.

The 2nd diet 2020 certification and membership of WAACSP comes up this October online in Nigeria and Ghana- it gives a good opportunity to become a certified customer service professional- consider it.

Click HERE to read about the forthcoming certification program.

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