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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Graduate Customer Representative

💰 $28,000 - $45,000

Customer ServiceGraduateEntry LevelSupport

🎯 Role Definition

A Graduate Customer Representative is an entry-level, client-facing professional responsible for delivering timely, accurate, and empathetic support across phone, email, chat and social channels. This role combines high-quality customer interaction with reliable administrative execution — managing inquiries, processing transactions, escalating technical or billing issues, and actively contributing feedback to product and operations teams to improve the end-to-end customer experience. The position is ideal for recent graduates who are customer-centric, detail-oriented, and motivated to grow into specialist or leadership roles within customer success, sales or operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • University graduate (any discipline) with internship or part-time retail/customer experience
  • Customer Service Intern or Student Ambassador roles
  • Retail or Hospitality Associate transitioning into corporate customer support

Advancement To:

  • Customer Service Specialist / Senior Customer Representative
  • Team Lead — Customer Support
  • Customer Success Associate / Account Coordinator
  • Billing or Order Management Specialist
  • Quality Assurance Analyst — CX

Lateral Moves:

  • Inside Sales Representative
  • Operations Coordinator
  • Marketing Communications Assistant
  • Technical Support Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Serve as the first point of contact for customers across phone, email, live chat, and social media, ensuring friendly, accurate and timely responses that align with company tone and SLA requirements.
  • Diagnose, troubleshoot and resolve basic product or service-related issues; create clear support tickets for complex or technical problems and follow up until resolution.
  • Process orders, returns, exchanges, upgrades and cancellations accurately in the CRM/order management system, verifying customer identity and payment details per compliance guidelines.
  • Manage billing, invoicing and payment inquiries — investigate discrepancies, apply adjustments or credits when authorized, and escalate disputes to billing specialists.
  • Maintain comprehensive and up-to-date customer records in the CRM (e.g., Salesforce, Zendesk), ensuring notes, next steps and follow-up dates are logged and searchable.
  • Meet and consistently track performance metrics and KPIs, including first contact resolution (FCR), average handle time (AHT), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and service-level adherence.
  • Conduct proactive outreach to customers for onboarding, activation, renewals and satisfaction checks to improve retention and cross-sell opportunities.
  • Onboard and educate new customers by guiding them through product setup, account configuration, and best-practice usage, using knowledge base articles and scripted walkthroughs.
  • Escalate complex or unresolved issues to higher-tier support, product teams or account managers with a full context summary and relevant documentation to speed resolution.
  • Identify and document recurring issues, patterns and product feedback; collaborate with product and operations teams to prioritize fixes, knowledge base updates and process improvements.
  • Participate in daily shift handovers and team huddles to share urgent customer issues, status updates and lessons learned to ensure continuity of service.
  • Use live chat and co-browse tools to guide customers through web flows, forms and self-service portals, reducing friction and improving completion rates.
  • Cross-sell and upsell relevant products and service enhancements when appropriate, following ethical selling principles and scripts that prioritize customer needs.
  • Verify compliance with data protection, privacy and industry-specific regulations while handling sensitive customer information; follow secure payment and authentication procedures.
  • Assist with account reconciliation tasks and support audit requests by retrieving historical interactions, invoices and transaction logs for review.
  • Conduct quality assurance checks on support interactions, provide peer feedback, and work with managers to implement training gaps identified through QA.
  • Prepare and submit standard daily and weekly reports on ticket volumes, common issues, and customer sentiment to the team lead or supervisor.
  • Handle peak-period volume and seasonal escalations with composure; prioritize cases based on impact, SLAs and customer escalation level.
  • Support multilingual or international customer inquiries when applicable, using translation tools or hand-offs to specialist teams to preserve service quality.
  • Participate in continuous learning programs — product refreshers, soft skills workshops and certification modules — to maintain up-to-date knowledge and service excellence.
  • Build and maintain constructive relationships with cross-functional teams (sales, logistics, technical support and billing) to ensure coordinated customer outcomes.
  • Champion customer-centric improvements by contributing to root-cause analyses and post-mortem reviews following major incidents or service outages.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc reporting and data extraction requests for customer trends and recurring issues to help product and operations prioritize fixes.
  • Help curate and maintain the knowledge base by proposing article updates, writing clear step-by-step guides, and flagging outdated content.
  • Assist in small-scale process improvement initiatives, such as streamlining returns workflows or simplifying account verification steps.
  • Participate in usability testing or user research sessions to provide front-line insights into common customer pain points.
  • Act as a backup escalation contact for after-hours or holiday support rotations when required.
  • Support onboarding projects for new hires by contributing real-case examples and interview feedback during recruitment.
  • Collaborate with QA to score recorded interactions and support targeted coaching plans for team development.
  • Help coordinate with logistics and warehouse teams during high-volume return or recall events to ensure customer expectations are met.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proficient in CRM and ticketing systems (Salesforce, Zendesk, Freshdesk or similar) with demonstrated ability to log, update and query customer records.
  • Hands-on experience with live chat platforms and in-app support tools (Intercom, LiveChat, Drift) or willingness to learn quickly.
  • Comfortable using order management systems and basic e-commerce workflows (order entry, fulfillment status, returns processing).
  • Familiarity with billing systems and payment reconciliation processes; ability to handle card and payment verification securely.
  • Strong data entry skills with high accuracy and speed; ability to manage multiple records and concurrent tabs without errors.
  • Basic Excel skills (VLOOKUP, filters, pivot tables) to extract and summarize ticket volumes and simple trends.
  • Experience or aptitude for using knowledge base platforms and contribution workflows (Confluence, Zendesk Guide).
  • Ability to generate and interpret simple reports and dashboards (ticket volume, CSAT scores, SLA breaches).
  • Multichannel support capability: phone systems (VoIP), email etiquette, chat shorthand and social media response best practices.
  • Familiarity with security, privacy and compliance fundamentals (GDPR, PCI-DSS awareness) and secure handling of PII.
  • Comfortable with customer support integrations (telephony, CRM, chat, payment gateways) and basic troubleshooting of integrations.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional verbal and written communication: clear, concise and customer-centred messaging for diverse audiences.
  • Active listening and empathy: ability to de-escalate frustrated customers and validate concerns while moving toward resolution.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking: diagnose root causes and propose practical, customer-first solutions.
  • Time management and prioritization: handle high volume while maintaining quality and SLA adherence.
  • Resilience and stress tolerance: remain calm under pressure and learn from difficult interactions.
  • Teamwork and collaboration: share knowledge, support peers and escalate when appropriate.
  • Attention to detail: accurate data capture and following scripts/processes to avoid transactional errors.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning mindset: pick up product updates, policy changes and new tools quickly.
  • Persuasion and negotiation: secure agreeable outcomes during refunds, credits, or service amendments without overstepping policies.
  • Customer-centric mindset: consistently advocate for experiences that build trust and long-term loyalty.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent tertiary qualification, or relevant vocational diploma. Recent graduates with strong customer-facing internship or part-time experience encouraged to apply.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Communications, Marketing, Hospitality, Psychology, Information Systems or related fields.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Communications or Public Relations
  • Hospitality Management
  • Marketing
  • Information Technology / Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 0–2 years of customer-facing experience; recent graduates or candidates with internships, retail, hospitality, call center or helpdesk exposure.

Preferred:

  • 6–12 months of experience using CRM or ticketing platforms; internship or part-time roles involving direct customer contact, order processing or technical support are an advantage.
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