Mid-Level

Telephone Service Representative (Telephone Service Rep)

At a telephone company, you serve as a customer-facing telephone service representative — handling service-installation, billing, service-disruption, and account-management inquiries from telephone-service customers — across the operations that telephone-service customer relationships generate.

Career Level
Junior
Mid
Senior
Director
VP
Executive
Work Personality
C
R
E
S
I
A
Conventionalorganizing, detail-oriented
Realistichands-on, practical
Based on Holland Code framework
Job markets for Telephone Service Representative (Telephone Service Rep)s
Employment concentration · ~161 areas
Based on employment in related occupations
Mapped SOC categories:
BLS Occupational Employment Statistics
What it's like

What it's like to be a Telephone Service Representative (Telephone Service Rep)

Telephone-service-rep work runs across phone queues, walk-in customer offices, and account-management workflows — pulling customer records, fielding billing or service questions, supporting new-service installation work, handling complaints or escalations. First-contact resolution and customer-retention anchor the operating measures.

What complicates the day-to-day is the multi-product complexity that telephone-service operations now involve — voice service, internet, mobile, video, bundled services, and increasingly home-security and managed services all generate customer questions, and reps build the working knowledge across the product portfolio. Variance across employers is real: large telecommunications operators (incumbent carriers, MVNOs, cable-affiliated providers) run service reps within structured customer-service operations; smaller regional operators run with broader scope per rep.

It fits people warm under sustained customer pressure, organized with multi-system data, and steady through call-volume peaks. Contact-center and telecommunications-industry credentials anchor advancement. The trade-off is the cumulative emotional load — service customers often call about outages or billing problems, and reps absorb that across the shift.

RelationshipsAbove avg
SupportModerate
IndependenceModerate
Working ConditionsLower
AchievementLower
RecognitionLower
O*NET Work Values survey
✦ Editorial — written by Truest from industry research and career patterns
Career Paths

Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.

$239K$179K$119K$60K$0KLower paying387 metro areas, sorted by salary level
All experience levels1
This level's estimated range
INDUSTRIES PAYING ABOVE AVERAGE
1 BLS OEWS May 2024 covers all Telephone Service Representative (Telephone Service Rep)s (SOC 43-2011.00), not just this title · BEA RPP 2023
* Top salaries exceed this figure. BLS caps reported wages at ~$240K to protect individual privacy in high-earning roles.
Exploring the Telephone Service Representative (Telephone Service Rep) career path? Truest helps you figure out if it's the right fit — and plan your path forward.
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✦ Editorial — career progression and interview guidance based on industry patterns
The Broader Landscape

Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.

$30K–$61K
Salary Range
10th – 90th percentile
36K
U.S. Employment
-26.3%
10yr Growth
3K
Annual Openings

How this category is changing

$64K$61K$59K$56K$53K201920202021202220232024$53K$64K
BLS OEWS May 2024 · BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034

Skills & Requirements

Active ListeningSpeakingSocial PerceptivenessService OrientationReading ComprehensionCoordinationMonitoringTime ManagementWritingCritical Thinking
O*NET OnLine · Bureau of Labor Statistics
43-2011.00

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Federal data: BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (May 2024) · BLS Employment Projections · O*NET OnLine
Truest editorial: Fit check, role profile, things that vary, advancement analysis, lateral moves, interview questions.