The Other Kind of Customer Service

People say customer service jobs are difficult, customer service employees are terribly underpaid, customer service employees are abused, a whole host of things about how horrible customer service is as a living.

I can't disagree with that.

But people also say that customer service jobs aren't meant to be careers - they're meant to be "starter jobs", jobs high school kids can do, jobs that don't require any skill or experience.

I can't disagree with that either. And it may well all be true. But it also discredits my job in customer service. A job that requires at least a bachelors degree, masters preferred. A job that requires at least several years of experience in the field, five plus preferred. A job that pays a meager $18 per hour when wages start at $15 at McDonalds. My seven years in college, my two degrees, my forty plus hours per week. Those are worth more than just $3 per hour.

I work for a college whose last published enrollment was over 11,000 students. There are currently three academic advisors serving those 11,000 students in a department that, fully staffed, should have at least six full time advisors. We are still working remotely due to COVID so our appointments are all via phone and Zoom and we communicate primarily via email outside of those appointments. One of my coworkers is fully booked with one appointment every thirty minutes for forty hours per week for the next four weeks. Another coworker has over two hundred emails and fifty voicemails sitting in her inbox waiting to be acknowledged in between her back to back appointments.

We are all at least a week behind in email communications. Students hound us for responses day after day, complain to our supervisors when they don't get a response fast enough, lie about how many people they've contacted and how many times they've contacted someone and even how long they've waited for a response. We are frequently verbally abused despite the fact that we are constantly actively working our asses to exhaustion to serve those very same students and provide the best possible service we are capable of. Coworkers in every department are quitting every other week because of staffing shortages and low pay. We desperately need time off to de-stress but the thought of coming back to hundreds more emails and voicemails stresses us out even more than not taking a vacation, so we don't. It's not that we can't afford to financially, or that our jobs won't let us. It's that our jobs are so stressful and mentally exhausting that a vacation would genuinely not make it better.

I could complain about my job all day. All day. That's not even an exaggeration. It is mentally exhausting. It is challenging. It is so depleting. Eight hour days doesn't sound so bad, but by the end of the day I'm too tired to cook and by 7:30pm I'm already ready for bed. On the weekends my inner clock no longer matters, I just oversleep out of a desperate need for sleep. I started taking energy supplements to try and get rid of this constant brain fog I have. I'm in my mid-twenties but I feel like I've aged thirty years in the past six months.

But I love it.

I love my job because I love my coworkers. I love my job because I love the gratification I feel in helping someone else achieve their goals. I love my job because I love being the person I didn't have when I was in school. I love my job because I love the feeling of satisfaction I get after an appointment where the student leaves happy, relieved, and excited to start the new term.

That moment at the end of a phone call when I ask a student if there is anything else I can help them with and they say something like:

No, I think you've answered everything and cleared up more than I even knew I needed cleared up! I was really nervous and stressed about everything I needed to do but you really made me feel a lot better. I'm actually really excited to start school now that I know it's not nearly as complicated and overwhelming as it seemed at first!

That moment makes me all warm and fuzzy inside and it reaffirms why I chose this profession in the first place. It makes me feel like I'm actually useful and valuable and appreciated. College students are my customers and college is what I'm trying to sell. Success and independence is what I'm trying to sell. A passion for learning and education is what I'm trying to sell. I am a strong advocate for college not being for everyone though. I will never push college on someone who doesn't need nor want to go to college.

But for those who do want to attend, for those who genuinely feel nervous excitement at the beginning, for those who actively want to learn and understand the process and be (mostly) independent in their education, those are the ones I want to help. Those are the ones I entered this career for.

But that feeling can be found at any college, why stay at a college with so many issues?

Because of my coworkers. Plain and simple. I adore my coworkers. I have admittedly not had a large number of jobs but the coworkers I have had have generally been standoffish and cold and have taken a very much hands-off approach to new employees.

My current place of employment has been absolutely nothing but supportive. From the very beginning they did nothing but acknowledge that new employees are not expected to already know everything. They encourage questions, even if I think it's a dumb one or I've asked it a hundred times already. They encourage new employees to set boundaries and enforce them - know the limits of your job description and don't let a coworker tell you otherwise. They have provided numerous check-ins, trainings, opportunities for feedback and questions, shadowing opportunities, and they checked with me before throwing me in the pit on my own while still making it clear that the best way to learn is to just do it. There is only so much one can learn from reading and studying and watching.

My department is currently working at half capacity. We are so far behind in our work and our students are noticing. We had a department meeting with our supervisor today and one of my coworkers, bless her god damn blunt heart, told our supervisor that we cannot keep working like this and we need overtime approved so that we can spend some extra time responding to students.

She got it approved.

And she even recommended that, if we use overtime this weekend, we work Monday (a holiday) to get overtime and holiday pay. Because why not get the most bang for your buck, right?

Our supervisor had also previously asked us a few days ago if we would be willing to work a couple Saturdays leading up to the start of term so that students can be served right up to the last minute. Normally we have flex hours, meaning if we work 4 hours on Saturday, we can take 4 hours off another day that week instead of getting overtime. While I personally prefer overtime, the flex hours were great before because an 8am to 5pm job sucks ass when you have things that need to be done in your personal life and you cannot do them on weekends or outside of that eight to five range. That was one of my favorite things about this job when I first started.

But late hours and weekends have almost become a norm in our schedules now because "students come first". And while I support that philosophy, I also value my personal life, my personal relationships, my family, my mental health, my responsibilities. I'm a firm believer in setting boundaries between my work life and personal life and regular weekend hours was starting to infringe on that boundary far more than I would have liked. I do not live for work. My life is not meant for my students. I will do what I can within a reasonable time frame but my time is my time and I don't support a workplace philosophy that implies the customer comes before your own personal time. My supervisor followed up on our overtime conversation by telling us that we can either flex our time or we can get paid for it.

I love my supervisor. I love my coworkers. I love the interpersonal relationships involved in my work culture. I love the supportiveness and the excitement and the passion everyone has for their students and their students' successes. When we do get to work on campus, there is a little party with clappers and cheering when we get a new student registered for their first term.

But seeing and hearing the relief in a student after they've met with me, that feeling of "Yessss, I DO have this!". That is why I love my job.

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