The Comprehensive Guide to Customer Support and Service Salaries

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Swetha Amaresan
Swetha Amaresan

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Congratulations. You're considering a career in customer support and service. You probably want to do your research first, looking into industry trends, best companies to work for, and the required skills and knowledge. After deciding whether or not the job seems like a good fit for you, you might finally decide to check out the average salary. Understanding the average (and maximum potential) salary of a new industry is important. You want to find a balance between loving your job and making a salary that helps you afford the things you love outside of work.

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Keep reading to find out if a career in customer service, support, success, or experience is for you.

Customer Service Salaries

Customer Support Salaries

Customer Success Salaries

Customer Experience Salaries

Customer Service Salaries

We consulted PayScale, an authoritative service that provides U.S. salary data for industries across the board. PayScale creates their salary reports by analyzing anonymous salary data submitted by real employees, comparing various factors (i.e., years of experience, education level, similar job titles), and performing background checks and tests to ensure reliability and validity.

What Is Customer Service?

Customer service is the assistance your company offers its customers before, during, or after they make a purchase. While your products or services are significant in the buying experience, excellent customer service can add to your company's value. In fact, Salesforce reports that 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. In addition to providing value and retaining customers, good customer service can also help increase profits and customer recommendations.

Customer Service Representative Salary

Customer service representatives are the frontline workers for customer service teams. They reach out to customers, offering product and service solutions and other proactive communications.

Customer service representative salary $41,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $41,000
Median salary: $40,639
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $30,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $57,000

Customer Service Specialist Salary

Similarly to customer service reps, customer service specialists also reach out to customers with product or service offers. Additionally, customer service specialists may serve as a liaison between the other customer service reps and the customer service manager or supervisors, since they typically have more experience.

customer service specialist salary $45,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $45,000
Median salary: $44,582
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $33,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $62,000

Customer Service Supervisor Salary

Customer service supervisors typically oversee a team of junior customer service representatives. They might answer any questions for employees and help handle crises. There may be multiple supervisors working with a given team.

customer service supervisor salary $53,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $53,000
Median salary: $53,045
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $39,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $70,000

Customer Service Manager Salary

Customer service managers are in charge of managing their entire customer service team. They will help with hiring and training their reps and offering feedback on their progress. They will also handle any long-term customer issues that the customer service reps can no longer solve.

customer service manager salary $60,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $60,000
Median salary: $60,017
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $41,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $86,000

Customer Support Salaries

What Is Customer Support?

Customer support is responding to customer phone calls, emails, live chats, etc. about your products or services. They have questions, complaints, or need help, and you’re helping to supply that need to them. Instead of convincing them to buy your products, you’re simply guiding them through their process, either pre- or post-purchase.

It’s also important to note the effects of bad or ineffective customer support. In 2022, Zendesk reports that 61% of customers will switch to a competitor after just one bad customer support experience. It’s up to customer support representatives, specialists, analysts, and managers to prevent that from happening.

Customer Support Representative Salary

Customer support representatives are the frontline workers for the customer support teams. They respond to customer outreach, answer inquiries, and come up with solutions to their problems.

customer support representative salaries $44,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $44,000
Median salary: $43,914
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $34,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $63,000

Customer Support Specialist Salary

Similarly to customer support reps, customer support specialists also respond to customer outreach. Additionally, customer support specialists may serve as a liaison between the other customer support reps and the customer support manager, since they typically have a little more experience.

customer support specialist salary $47,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $47,000
Median salary: $47,342
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $36,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $64,000

Customer Support Analyst Salary

Customer support analysts identify technical problems customers have with a product or service and help troubleshoot. They might also analyze customer data to update products or services. This role typically falls in tech companies.

customer support analyst salary $53,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $53,000
Median salary: $52,677
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $40,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $77,000

Customer Support Manager Salary

Customer support managers manage their entire customer support team. They help hire and train their reps and offer feedback on their progress. They communicate often with customers, especially about large-scale problems and ensure that their team remains aligned with company goals.

customer support manager salary $66,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $66,000
Median salary: $66,261
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $46,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $95,000

Customer Success Salaries

What Is Customer Success?

Customer success works closely with customers as they use your products or services post-purchase. You work together as partners with the equal goal of wanting the customer to reach their goals through using your products or services.

Customer Success Associate Salary

Customer success associates work directly with customers, helping them with product onboarding, goal-setting, and executing campaigns. They function as the consultants of their customers, offering them insights and tools to be successful.

customer success associate salary $51,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $51,000
Median salary: $51,065
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $40,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $71,000

Customer Success Manager Salary

Customer success managers either work similarly to customer success associates or oversee their customer success team, based on the company. Overall, their goals are to ensure customers successfully master the software, implement it into their companies, and achieve their goals.

customer success manager salary $71,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $71,000
Median salary: $71,262
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $49,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $111,000

Customer Experience Salaries

What Is Customer Experience?

Customer experience focuses on the overarching programs within the company that influence customer experiences at every touchpoint. These programs help anyone on a customer team share a vision and understand how quality customer experiences can contribute to the company's financial goals.

Customer Experience Manager Salary

Customer experience managers design and implement programs within the company to improve the customer experience and encourage other teams to have a customer-focused vision. In all programs they create, they must attempt to maximize revenue and minimize company costs.

customer experience manager salary $66,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $66,000
Median salary: $66,384
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $43,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $103,000

Customer Experience Director Salary

Customer experience directors have higher-level positions and are responsible for setting the customer vision for the entire company. They create overarching policies based on customer data to continuously improve the customer experience and set goals for their customer teams to live by.

customer experience directory salary $109,000

Average salary, according to PayScale: $109,000
Median salary: $109,500
Bottom 10th percentile salary: $68,000
Top 90th percentile salary: $163,000

The customer comes first.

There’s a reason that so much emphasis is put on the service, support, success, and experience of the customer. They’re the direct link to the success or failure of a business. As a customer service team member, you provide assistance and value to the customer experience. And if you ever question your value as a customer service employee, just remember you’re invaluable to employers. And fortunately for you, there’s room to grow into the position and salary of your desires.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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