Career Explorer Office and admin
Changing shape
Customer service representatives
Interact with customers to provide basic or scripted information in response to routine inquiries about products and services. May handle and resolve general complaints. Excludes individuals whose duties are primarily installation, sales, repair, and technical support.
Among the careers AI is changing fastest: more resilient than 3% of the 831 careers we score. AI exposure is very high (the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates it very high), and US jobs are projected to change by -5.3% by 2035, expected to shrink. The work leans on emotional intelligence.
AI can do many of the tasks, and hiring is expected to grow slower than average or to shrink. The job is likely to change, so build the human parts of it.
- Median pay (2025)
- $44,770
- Job growth to 2035
- -5.3%
- Openings a year
- 290,000
- People doing it (2025)
- 2.7 million
- Usual route in
- High school diploma, then short on-the-job training
Where people already use AI for this work
- Respond to customer problems or inquiries
- Explain technical details of products or services
- Provide information to guests, clients, or customers
From Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025).
Work AI rarely helps with
- Maintain sales or financial records
- Collect fares or payments
- Examine financial activities, operations, or systems
What the work looks like
- Confer with customers by telephone or in person to provide information about products or services, take or enter orders, cancel accounts, or obtain details of complaints.
- Keep records of customer interactions or transactions, recording details of inquiries, complaints, or comments, as well as actions taken.
- Check to ensure that appropriate changes were made to resolve customers' problems.
- Contact customers to respond to inquiries or to notify them of claim investigation results or any planned adjustments.
- Resolve customers' service or billing complaints by performing activities such as exchanging merchandise, refunding money, or adjusting bills.
From O*NET 31.0, US Department of Labor.
What the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects
- Fewer of these jobs, as advances in speech and language processing and in artificial intelligence (AI) allow computers to handle customer service interactions with greater frequency.
- More of these jobs, as federal payment models emphasize patient satisfaction as a requirement for reimbursement. This will result in increased demand for customer service representatives employed in hospitals that continue to try to achieve high levels of patient satisfaction.
Careers using similar strengths, with a stronger outlook
- Receptionists and information clerksChanging shape, Index 7, -1.7%
- Medical secretaries and administrative assistantsGrows with AI, Index 16, +4.8%
- Cargo and freight agentsGrows with AI, Index 31, +6.2%
- Library assistants, clericalChanging shape, Index 12, -6.4%
Also known as: Account Representative, Customer Service Representative (CSR), Customer Service Specialist, Member Services Representative (Member Services Rep), Call Center Representative, Client Services Representative, Customer Care Representative (CCR), Customer Service Agent.
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Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; O*NET 31.0; Microsoft Research (2025); Anthropic Economic Index (2026); Eloundou and colleagues (Science, 2024); Felten, Raj and Seamans (2023). How we score. Updated 12 October 2026.