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