Is Consumer Services a Good Career Path

Career Success

Feb 17

I would venture to say that 80% of Americans consider a career in consumer services at some point in their life. It’s a broad sector of jobs, with 81% of the population working in this sector.

So if you’re considering a career path in consumer services, here is what you should know before deciding if this is a viable career path for you. And the short answer is it depends a lot on you, but I’ll help you figure that out.

What are Consumer Services

Consumer service jobs are those found in industries that provide a service to someone. This includes retailers who provide a space for others to sell their products and it includes direct-to-consumer services such as automotive repairs and financial advice. If the job helps meet consumers’ every day needs such as food, health, or leisure - it’s consumer services. The Bureau of Labor Statistics categorizes consumer services in these 7 sectors.

Education and Health Services

Common jobs found in this category include teachers, academic advisors, nurses, and home health care aids.

Trade, Transportation, and Utilities

Common jobs found in this category include wholesale buyers, salespeople, retail salespeople, cashiers, inside customer service representatives, truck drivers, rail workers, and electricians.

Professional and Business Services

This category includes legal services, accounting, engineering, and computer systems. You can find a diverse set of jobs from paralegals to management consultants in this category. It also includes common jobs such as landscaping and housekeeping.

Leisure and Hospitality

This category is made up of mostly entertainment companies, food services, and hotels. While jobs at amusement parks, restaurants, and fast food make up the majority of the jobs, you can also find jobs such as personal trainers included in this category.

Financial Services

Common job titles such as loan officers, insurance agents, and tellers can be found in this group. However, it also includes investment banking and real estate.

Information Services

In this group, you’ll find jobs within publishing, the motion picture business, telecommunications, and data processing.

Other Services (because what data set would be complete without a misc category)

This includes quite a few different jobs. Some common ones you may recognize include maintenance roles, laundry services, private chefs, automotive mechanics, and cosmetologists.

If you want to explore more jobs within these categories and the average salary of each, read my article about 46 Consumer Services Jobs and What They Pay.

The rest of this article is going to assess how you can determine if these jobs could be right for you.

Skills Required

There are thousands of different jobs you can do within consumer services, but the vast majority of them involve working with other people - in particular customers. If you like working with the public, this could be a good career choice. Many of these jobs involve a lot of face-to-face interaction and some will require you to develop long-term relationships.

Not only should you like working directly with customers, but you should also have good communication skills because you’ll need them to succeed in almost every one of these jobs.

If you’re thinking about this as a bridge job or an early career opportunity, I think it’s worth noting that you’ll develop a lot of transferrable skills in consumer services. Some of those are communication, thinking on your feet, problem-solving with limited information, creativity, and collaboration.

What I advise everyone to do is to pull up some job listings online and analyze them. For each responsibility, ask yourself three questions.

Do I have these skills?
Can I prove to someone else that I have those skills on my resume and in an interview?
Do I enjoy using these skills and do I want to keep developing them?

Job Opportunity

The next question I would ask myself is about the future. If I go down this road, will there be enough job opportunities to support me and my career goals?

I would argue that consumer services may have more job opportunities than any other category of jobs, but that is partially because this category includes so many different jobs across several industries.

Currently, in the US, there are over 8 million job openings each month in consumer services, and as I mentioned earlier, 81% of the workforce is employed in one of these jobs.

If you want to know which areas of consumer services are growing the fastest and have the most opportunities, read my article How Many Jobs Are Available in Consumer Services.

Growth Opportunity

If your goal is to be a Steady Eddy or Steady Betty (which there is nothing wrong with), then this might not matter as much. But if you want to climb the ladder and be promoted, you’ll want to examine how much opportunity there is for this.

Most sectors within consumer services anticipate a 6% to 10% increase in manager-level roles over the next 10 years, so I would say it’s a good category to enter if you’re looking for advancement. To put that in perspective, many other job categories are seeing around a 5% to 8% growth.

Where Are the Jobs Located

The UK leads the world in percent of population employed in consumer services with the USA, Canada, France, South Korea, Japan, and Germany trailing closely behind.

If you live in any of those countries, consumer services are a pretty safe bet.

Hours

Because of the nature of these jobs, many have irregular hours. While there are some jobs with a cushy Monday through Friday, 9-5, depending on the specific type of jobs you target, you may find yourself working weekends, nights, or a combination of different hours.

I’ve worked a couple of jobs in consumer services before and I can tell you it doesn’t get much better as you climb the ladder into management, either. If your teams are working irregular hours, you’re going to get messages and calls at irregular hours.

Know that if you go into consumer services, there is a high chance that you’ll need to be flexible.

Job Security

While it seems that no job is insulated from disruption, the last thing you want to do is take a job that won’t be around in 3 to 5 years. I don’t see the majority of consumer services being disrupted with AI as much as industries like technology have.

Consumers will still need nurses, teachers, customer service representatives, rail workers, accountants, hotel staff, and many others. However, some of these jobs are easier to replace or reduce than others. Pay attention to trends around you.

For example, no one is going to ditch their doctor or lawyer for an AI-powered or offshored one. However, automated trucking may become more popular, reducing the amount of drivers needed on the road. Or offshoring customer service teams continues to become a reality, requiring less staff in the countries that I mentioned earlier.

Pay

Again, this is a large category of jobs so you can expect a large range of pay potential. On the low end, there are several consumer services jobs that only pay $33,000 per year. Those include jobs like front desk clerks or bank tellers.

On the other end, there are jobs that pay over $100,000 per year such as a call center director, private chef, CRM coordinator, customer experience strategist, or an insurance agent.

If you’re curious about exploring salaries, I’ve got a list of consumer service jobs and what they pay.

Some of the Best Consumer Jobs

Here are some of the best consumer jobs (in my opinion)

Client Services Manager

Client Services Managers ensure that customers are satisfied with their service and also oversee projects to make sure they not only meet customer expectations but also stay within defined budgets. In this role, your job includes advocating for customers, collecting feedback, and training others to ensure compliance with company policies.

Most people have a Bachelor’s degree and several years of experience in related fields. You’ll need great communication, organization, and negotiation abilities to thrive in this job.

Average Annual Salary Band: $60,000 to $75,000

CRM Coordinator

Customer relationship management software is used by nearly every sales and marketing team these days. CRM Coordinators work closely with these departments to maintain customer data and assist with reaching out to new leads and following up on communications. Many have a Bachelor's degree and are masters at a particular type of CRM such as Salesforce.

You can find these jobs in private industries as well as education and social services.

Average Annual Salary Band: $74,000 to $100,000

Customer Relationship Manager

Customer Relationship Managers are the people who develop and maintain client relationships. They’re problem solvers and good at resolving customer issues over the long term to ensure continued business.

These roles are often a blend of sales and account management as they oversee the entire customer lifecycle and build trust through relationships with their customers over time. Many banks employ customer relationship managers.

Average Annual Salary Band: $55,000 to $ 75,000 plus commissions

Event Manager

Event Managers plan and may organize events for conferences, weddings, and concerts depending on their company. Corporate offices may hire event managers and many other service-based industries employ these roles too.

This job requires a level of creativity to develop concepts and themes as well as a high degree of organization and communication. You’ll also need to understand budgets and how to manage them.

Average Annual Salary Band: $60,000 to $80,000

Financial Advisor

Financial Advisors work for investment firms and assist people with reaching their financial goals. This may include college planning, insurance, and retirement. Most states I’ve worked in require special training and licensing to become a Financial Advisor. You can find these jobs with life insurance companies, banks, and retirement planning companies to name a few.

Most of these roles have a heavy commission piece to their compensation as they are sales roles. I’ve met Financial Advisors who make $150,000 plus during good years and I’ve met some who make less than $100,000. Depending on your sales skills, you could earn much more than the salary band below.

Average Annual Salary Band: $60,000 to $95,000

Flight Attendant

If you want to see the world, consider becoming a Flight Attendant. These people keep passengers safe, enforce aircraft rules, and also create memorable customer experiences. This job involves a blend of conflict management, customer service, and communication abilities.

These jobs are expected to continue to grow by over 10%, so there are plenty of jobs available. You’ll need to obtain an FAA Certification, but usually, this happens after you’ve secured a job and completed the airline’s training program.

Average Annual Salary Band: $52,000 to $90,000

Paralegal

Paralegals support attorneys by locating and contacting witnesses, arranging interviews and depositions, and drafting declarations and statements. They also research relevant laws and investigate facts.

You will need to obtain an Associate degree and it’s beneficial to explore a paralegal certificate program to obtain one of these jobs. The BLS forecasts a continued 4% growth in Paralegal jobs over the next ten years.

Average Annual Salary Band: $65,000 to $90,000

Retail Store Manager

Retail Store Managers have a great deal of responsibility. They are tasked with managing overall store operations including recruiting, scheduling, training, merchandising, and implementing promotions. They also have P&L responsibility for their store, meaning they typically monitor profitability and losses. Often there is a bonus component in addition to a base salary that is based on profit and other KPIs.

Depending on the store, its size, and revenue, some Store Managers can make well over the salary band listed below.

Average Annual Salary Band: $65,000 to $129,000

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Choosing Consumer Services as a Career

Do I like working with people, the public in particular?
What skills do I want to develop? Do they align with the ones required for consumer service jobs?
What are my career goals? What do I hope to achieve by going into consumer services?
What kind of lifestyle do I want to create? Do I want to work hard and make lots of money or have more flexibility and get paid less? (be mindful that this will evolve as your life changes)
Am I good at communication? Do people understand me when I give instructions and do I communicate with empathy?
Do I handle stress well? Some of these jobs are very stressful.
Do I like to serve others?

Downsides of Consumer Services Jobs

These jobs aren’t for everyone. There’s a good chance that you will have to deal with difficult customers and some of these jobs will have low pay and poor benefits. Even the ones that do pay well sometimes require that you start in a job that doesn’t pay that great.

Best Way to Decide if Consumer Services is Right For You

You can read my articles all day long and that’s a good place to start learning about jobs. I also really like Orchard’s Career Discovery which lets you listen to people doing these jobs talk about what it’s like and how to get into that job.

But the best way to decide is to talk to people doing the jobs you are exploring. Schedule an informational interview if it makes sense. You can also consider internships. Sometimes the best way to decide if something is right for you is to just do it. Even if you’re not in college, there are plenty of adult internships available.

Is Consumer Services a Good Career Path Recommended Reading

How Many Jobs Are Available in Consumer Services

What Do Consumer Services Jobs Pay

22 Internships for Career Changers

Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a boutique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.