The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Customer Service Jobs

Why you should work at one anyway

Nancy Parish
5 min readDec 8, 2023
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

I started my professional career as a customer service representative. We were called patient referral agents, but make no mistake, it was an entry-level customer service position for someone like me who had a health background.

I answered questions about laser surgery, supplying scripted answers to the caller’s questions about laser surgery. We’d get the occasional nutjob who asked more personal questions about body parts. Let your imagination fill in the rest.

I moved on to other positions in customer service after that first job. I answered questions about writing, books, makeup, records management, and cell phones. I even had a rather unfortunate stint collecting student loans on my way to becoming a supervisor and then a manager.

I also worked as a fraud claims representative. Nothing like getting yelled at during the Christmas season because the algorithm mistakingly thought the large television someone bought to surprise their family was fraud.

You get the point. I have experience in this field.

The Customer service department, no matter what it’s called, is a company’s first opportunity to address its customer’s needs. You anger your customers; you will not be in business…

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Nancy Parish

Amateur Cat Herder. Previously, Contributing Editor for CWIM. My ebook Life with Scout: The Blind Kitty Chronicles avail. https://thesoundandfurry.com/