Is Consumer Services A Good Career Path? [Roles, Salaries & More]

Is Consumer Services a good career path?

If you’ve landed in this article, you probably have tons of questions about working in consumer services and are wondering if this is a career path worth pursuing.

The good news is, whether you’re an entry-level consumer service professional or well into another industry looking for a career change, this article is for you!

In this article, we’ll be approaching topics like:

What Are Consumer Services?
What Companies Are In The Consumer Services Field?
What Are The Job Options In Consumer Services?
What Are The Skills Needed For Consumer Services?
What Do Consumer Services Jobs Pay?
Is Consumer Services A Good Career Path? (Our Verdict)
How To Build A Job-Winning Consumer Services Resume

Let’s dig in!

What Are Consumer Services?

Consumer Services are activities designed to meet consumers’ personal needs. Retail, hospitality, entertainment, financial services, healthcare, education, and telecommunications are some industries focused on consumer services.

Consumer Services focuses on providing customers convenience and support in their day-to-day activities. These services usually involve human interaction and personalized attention to address specific customer needs or desires.

What Companies Are In The Consumer Services Field?

Many companies across different sectors operate in Consumer Services. Here are some examples from different industries:

Retail: Companies like Walmart and Amazon, which offer a selection of consumer goods and a convenient shopping experience.
Hospitality: Companies like Booking.com and Airbnb, which provide accommodations to travelers.
Entertainment: Includes players like Disney and Netflix, which offer entertainment services ranging from theme parks and resorts to streaming media.
Financial Services: PayPal and American Express, which provide financial products like electronic payments and banking services.
Healthcare: Organizations like UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health, which deliver medical and health-related services.
Education: Companies like Coursera, Khan Academy, and local education institutions are examples of educational consumer services.
Telecommunications: Service providers like AT&T and Verizon are examples of communication services including Internet, cable, and phone.

These directly interact with end-users through different services.

What Are The Job Options In Consumer Services?

When looking for jobs in Consumer Services, you can either work in roles within the industry – for example, taking a Marketing position in a company that operates within the sector – or take a position that directly provides consumer services.

In this section, we’ll cover the most common job options in the field.

Jobs In Customer Service

Customer Service roles are aimed at addressing immediate consumer needs and resolving issues. They focus on reactive support for general inquiries, complaints, and problems. The most common roles in this area are:

Customer Service Representative (Entry-Level): Assists customers with questions, complaints, and issues.
Customer Service Supervisor (Mid-Level): Oversees a team of Customer Service Representatives. Customer Service Representatives can often progress into a Customer Service Supervisor role.
Customer Service Manager (Mid-Senior Level): Manages the Customer Service department, developing strategies to improve service quality. Customer Service Supervisors can often progress into a Customer Service Manager role.

Jobs In Customer Support

Roles in Customer Support aim to provide technical assistance to solve product-specific issues. The most common roles in this area are:

Customer Support Representative (Entry-Level): Assists customers with technical support or product issues.
Customer Support Engineer (Mid-Level): Provides technical support to customers, often requiring specialized knowledge of the product or service. Customer Support Representatives can progress into a Customer Support Engineer role, as long as they fill in technical skill gaps like knowledge in SQL, Python, APIs, and others.
Customer Support Manager (Mid-Senior Level): Leads the customer support team, ensuring effective resolution of technical issues and customer satisfaction. Customer Support Representatives can progress into a Customer Support Manager role.

Jobs In Customer Success

Jobs in Customer Success aim to ensure consumer satisfaction. They provide proactive support focused on long-term customer engagement and success. The most common roles in this area are:

Customer Success Manager (Mid-Senior Level): Focuses on building strong relationships with customers to ensure they achieve their desired outcomes with the company's products or services. Customer Service and Customer Support Representatives can progress into a Customer Success role.
Customer Experience Manager (Mid-Senior Level): Oversees the entire customer journey, ensuring a seamless and positive experience across all touchpoints. Customer Service and Customer Support Representatives can progress into a Customer Success role.

What Are The Skills Needed For Consumer Services?

You don't necessarily need a degree or experience to fill a position in Consumer Services. However, learning the skills required for each position is very important. Not only because you might need to work on your skill gaps, but also because you might have well-developed skills you can leverage to take a new role.

Here are the required skills for the most common roles in Consumer Services:

Entry-Level Roles (e.g. Customer Service And Customer Support Representatives):

Communication: The ability to communicate clearly both verbally and in writing.
Problem-Solving: The ability to resolve customer issues efficiently.
CRM: Familiarity with CRM systems like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Hubspot.
Product Knowledge: An understanding of the company's products or services.
Flexibility: Willingness to work different shifts, including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

Mid-Senior Manager Roles:

Communication: Strong verbal and written communication.
Leadership: The ability to lead, motivate, and manage a team.
Problem-Solving: Advanced problem-solving skills to handle escalated customer issues and support the team in finding solutions.
CRM: Proficiency with CRM systems like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Hubspot.
Product Knowledge: An understanding of the company's products or services.
Data Analysis: The ability to analyze performance metrics, customer feedback, and other data to improve service quality.
Strategic Thinking: The ability to develop and implement customer service strategies that align with the company's long-term goals.

Mid-Senior Technical Roles (e.g. Customer Support Engineer):

Communication: Strong verbal and written communication skills to explain technical concepts to non-technical customers clearly and concisely.
Technical Expertise: In-depth knowledge of hardware (e.g., CPUs, GPUs, storage devices, etc.), software (eg., operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux and scripting languages like Python, Bash, etc.), and networking (e.g., network protocols, firewall, etc.) to troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues.
Problem-Solving: Advanced problem-solving skills to diagnose and address technical issues efficiently, ensuring minimal disruption for the customer.
Product Knowledge: Extensive understanding of the company’s products or services to provide accurate and effective support.

Companies also love candidates who are patient, empathetic, and have strong relationship-building skills!

Finding Your Fit With Consumer Services Roles

Want to find out if you have the right fit for a Consumer Services role?

We've got you covered.

Here's a simple, step-by-step guide to find out if you have the skills to take a new position in Consumer Services!

Head over to LinkedIn and search for Consumer Services roles
Copy the job description of that Consumer Service role that sparked your interest
Head over to ResyMatch.io (or use our shortcut below)
Grab a copy of your most updated resume
Upload your resume on the left side
Paste the job description on the right side
Hit “Start Resume Scan”

Boom! ResyMatch will compare and score your resume versus the job's description and find missing skill gaps, like such:

ResyMatch will also check your resume for ATS, a software that recruiters use to track candidates through their hiring process, and provide best practices to improve your resume!

Use our shortcut below to get started:

5. What Do Consumer Services Jobs Pay?

Now that we’ve covered the most common jobs in Consumer Services, you might be asking yourself how what’s the pay range for these roles.

To answer this question, let’s head over to one of our favorite tools for salary research: Glassdoor.

Glassdoor is one of the world’s top job and recruiting websites, where users can anonymously provide information about their companies – including their current salary. Glassdoor provides an average salary range for various roles based on the information sent by its users.

According to Glassdoor, the base salary for the most common Consumer Services jobs in 2024 are:

Customer Service Representative: US$ 34K – US$ 46K/ year
Customer Service Supervisor: US$ 45K – US$ 65K/ year
Customer Service Manager: US$ 47K – US$ 77K/ year
Customer Support Representative: US$ 37K – US$ 53K/ year
Customer Support Engineer: US$ 76K – US$ 112K/ year
Customer Support Manager: US$ 68K – US$ 105K/ year
Customer Success Manager: US$ 67K – US$ 118K/ year
Customer Experience Manager: US$ 56K – US$ 93K/ year

Best Paying Jobs In Consumer Services Compared To The Average U.S. Salary In 2024

Now, let’s check what that looks like compared to the average U.S. salary.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average salary in the U.S. is US$ 63,795.

This is what the best-paying jobs in Consumer Services look like when we put them in perspective:

Customer Experience Manager, Customer Support Manager, Customer Support Engineer, and Customer Success Manager are the highest-paying roles in Consumer Services, with an earning potential of up to 84% higher than the U.S. average.

Now that we've got all of the most important information converted, it's time to answer the question that drove you to this article:

Is Consumer Services A Good Career Path? (Our Verdict)

Consumer Services is a good career path for people with an interest in communication and problem-solving.

Consumer Services roles are customer-centric, meaning professionals in this field work hard to provide clients with an outstanding experience. Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb are some examples of consumer services companies.

Companies in this field offer many entry-level positions that do not require a degree and interesting career progression possibilities that pay up to U$ 118,000/ year.

If you feel like this might be the career path for you, then pay close attention to this next section, because we'll be covering…

How To Build A Job-Winning Consumer Services Resume

Here's a fact most people don't usually realize: you don't need traditional experience to take a Consumer Services role.

You can leverage your unique background, experiences, and skills for nearly any position, as long as you sell it.

Think about your resume as an advertisement for yourself. Like any ad, you want it to be compelling and visually attractive, right?

That's what you'll do with your resume.

You will start by:

1. Leveraging The Best Keywords For Your Target Role

Remember ResyMatch.io, that resume and job description scanner tool we mentioned earlier in this article?

We first showed you how you can scan and compare your resume with your target job description to find out how your skills match the role.

But if you don't have a resume, you can find out the most required skills and keywords for your target role by running a job description scan.

Here's how: head over to ResyMatch.io and, in “Scan Type”, select “Job Description Scanner”. Then, copy the job description for your target role and paste it into the box on the left.

ResyMatch.io will provide a list of soft and hard skills most required for that role, which serve as keywords:

Skim through the list and check what keywords you could leverage in your resume.

For example, let's say you are a proactive and communicative individual. Are there any previous experiences, personal projects, or even academic achievements that you can showcase in your resume that prove this?

If the answer is “yes”, then hold on to these keywords and move to the next step, which is:

2. Writing Compelling Resume Bullets

This is where you'll start crafting a resume that sells!

You'll want your resume bullets to have just the right amount of hard and soft skills, action words, measurable results, and common words.

This means a compelling Consumer Service resume bullet for someone applying for a Customer Success role might look something like this:

“Implemented CRM training sessions with 50+ onboarding clients, improving satisfaction rates by 25%.”

This bullet focuses on specific Customer Success hard and soft skills, while also showcasing measurable results!

To help you write the perfect resume bullet, we've created ResyBullet.io, a free resume bullet analyzer that helps you write your resume in a way that grabs attention and illustrates value. Simply copy and paste your resume bullet below to begin your analysis:

ResyBullet will analyze and score your resume bullet and give you actionable insights for improvement.

Here's how our Consumer Service resume bullet scored on ResyBullet:

If you're a visual learner, check out our video that walks you through the step-by-step of writing a crazy-effective resume bullet:

3. Turning Your Resume Visually Appealing

The last step is wrapping all that up into an awesome layout. Our advice is to use a resume template so you can spare the time you'd normally spend designing and diagramming your resume and allocate it to your job search.

You can use ResyBuild.io to easily build and customize your resume in no time. Just pick one of the templates below and get started:

Free Job-Winning Resume Templates, Build Yours In No Time.

Choose a resume template below to get started:

Pro Tip: For more insight, check out our article: Customer Service Representative Resume Examples For 2024 [20+ Skills & Templates]

Ready To Track A Consumer Services Career Path?

Then check out our No Experience, No Problem course and access a proven framework for building the skills and results you need to break into a new industry (even if you have absolutely no relevant experience right now)!