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Anyone have any experience working in customer operations? By customer operations this person would be answering support calls from customers that have questions about a product and to help them troubleshoot any issues they have.
Would you say this is a good (or bad) place to start for a college grad? Or is this work generally done by non-college grads?
To be honest unless you are an engineer, doctor, teacher or lawyer; most jobs are really all about training. But in this economy employers are looking for college degrees. Soon college degree is like a high school diploma.
Sounds like an unskilled labor sort of job with a GED unless you are providing engineering support or something highly technical.
I would question why someone went to college for 4 years to answer phone calls.
Yeah and this is why I asked the question. It seems the folks in these jobs have college degrees at the company we work for. I'm in IT-- I was just wondering if it's common nowadays for college grads to have these types of jobs. And from what I understand they aren't paid well at all (big surprise..lol).
I think the root of my question comes from the comment just above-- is college degrees the new high school degree? As in, everyone gets one now?
And I should add-- maybe these guys do more than what I described above. But I know the group is called customer ops and they are the first line of questioning from customers.
What type of degree do you have? Can you give us more details about the job? I ask because it doesn't sound like a job that one needs a degree to do but without more details about the job, it's hard to speculate.
I can say this though. I am set to graduate in May with an IT degree, (computer science) and I have already signed an offer letter from a Fortune 500 company with what I think is a very good starting salary for a college grad so I completely disagree with anyone that says a college degree is the new high school degree.
Sounds like an unskilled labor sort of job with a GED unless you are providing engineering support or something highly technical.
I would question why someone went to college for 4 years to answer phone calls.
Maybe, but here are some other questions to consider:
Is this a company that I feel would be beneficial to my career?
If I don't consider this my dream job, does my dream job (or at least great jobs) exist within the company?
Are there people at the company that started in this position and moved to positions that I would really want?
It is a great place to start. I started in a similar customer service position in my company 12 years ago and moved my way up to marketing management. This type of job will teach you about the products your company sells, your customers, market segments as well as a lot of soft skills like effective communication.
More college grads need to realize that they have to start somewhere and can't turn their nose up at entry-level positions. If you work hard and try to get noticed you'll move up. It's all about going into the job with the right attitude.
I took an IT support position in 2010 after graduating in economics. The local economy was so bad I couldn't even get a bank teller's position then, and didn't have the money to move.
I stayed there about two years, making $15/hr, but drove a hundred miles roundtrip. I picked up some useful end user software skills, but it was fairly rudimentary stuff overall.
True call center/help desk positions don't have much growth these days. I worked at a local PC shop a decade ago coming out of high school, and back then, a kid that wanted to learn could take a help desk position and then advance beyond there according to their interests. Corporate IT departments viewed their entry level support as a junior partner/feeder program - in many departments today, IT staff are a cost center to be reduced. Help desk personnel are especially vulnerable to outsourcing and offshoring, as it's fairly low skill work that's just an expense to the company.
That $15/hr FTE help desk job I started in 2010 is now hiring only W-2 staff, and many have dismissed for no obvious reason by that employer. I worked at several other employers in this role, and for the most part, the only way to get out of phone support was to change employers. It took almost four years, but I finally got out of the help desk role and into a systems analyst position where my pay doubled from my last help desk job and there is clear ability to move up and around the firm. Do not stay in phone support any longer than you must as it's dead-end.
Depending on the company, those can be great jobs to have while attending college. I did something similar during summers and college breaks and so far it has worked out well for me. Unable to find something better, I went back when I got out of college and at least wasn't starting from scratch. Went from customer support, to client support, to system support, then went in to QA, etc.
Some of my higher flying friends with their degrees probably started out a little ahead of me when they finally found a job back then, but that has certainly leveled off and if you were to look at all our resumes we're all doing about equally as well. It's now all about experience and doesn't have much to do with that first entry level job.
A lot of it depends on the company, and a lot of it depends on the employee. When I started out, I was 20 and half the people in each training class were college kids and half were middle aged folks without a specific skill. Some took that opportunity and have gone on to bigger and better things. Others, well some just worked there (without going anywhere) and others washed out.
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