The consumer services sector of India has had quite remarkable growth over the recent past, with a swelling middle-class population, rapid urbanization, and an ever-growing service-oriented economy.
This article examines how many jobs are available in consumer services, major employers, projections of growth, challenges, in-demand skills, and salary expectations.
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What are Consumer Services?
Consumer services are the various services offered directly to consumers for their benefit or personal use rather than to businesses or organizations.
Consumer service includes a number of activities and industries, such as:
- Retail
- Hospitality and Tourism
- Financial Services
- Telecommunications
- Healthcare
- Education
- Entertainment
- Personal Services
- Transportation
- Customer Support
However, before deciding to join this sector, you must first ask yourself: is consumer services a good career path?
Job Availability as per Popular Job Portals
Based on latest estimates, below is the data for 2024:
- LinkedIn records around 51,000 customer service jobs open in India now with nearly 2,857 new postings in the past few days.
- Naukri.com brings up close to 53,474 customer service positions, and the company lists a vast number of entry-level as well as managerial positions.
- Indeed reports around 25,000 job openings especially for customer service roles.
Key Recruiting Companies
- Retail Giants: Companies that operate under the retail category like Reliance Retail, Future Group, and DMart are the key recruiters in the consumer services sector.
- E-commerce Players: Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra are hiring large numbers of people in different functional roles.
- Telecom Companies: Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea employs millions customer service executives.
- Banking and Financial Services: HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and State Bank of India have large customer-facing teams.
- Food and Beverage Chains: McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Café Coffee Day are substantial employers in the F&B service sector.
- Travel and Hospitality: Companies such as MakeMyTrip, OYO Rooms, and innumerable hotel chains have a lot of consumer service jobs.
And the Important Question … How Many Jobs are Available in Consumer Services? Consolidated Data
Currently, it is impossible to specify the entire sector of consumer services – it is too diverse and has a significant share of informal employment. We can make a kind of an estimate based on statistics on different sectors and reports by various industries:
1. Retail Industry:
- Employed approximately 46 million employees (2020)
- Will increase by 25 million new jobs up to 2030, according to the Retailers Association of India.
2. E-commerce:
- Employs more than 1 million people directly
- Supports an indirect base of 8 million jobs in logistics, warehousing, and allied industries.
- Is likely to create 1.45 million jobs in logistics and warehousing alone in coming years.
3. Banking and Financial Services:
- Employs more than 4.5 million people directly
- Expected to create 9-10 million jobs in the next decade
4. Telecommunications:
- Employs 4 million people directly and indirectly
5. Hospitality and Tourism:
- As per 2018 data, has provided 42.7 million jobs
- Expected to reach 52.3 million jobs by 2028 (World Travel and Tourism Council)
6. Healthcare:
- Employs approximately 4.7 million people in an organized sector
- Expected to generate 40 million new jobs by 2030 (inclusive of allied health services)
7. Education Services:
- Employs over 12 million teachers at all levels
- EdTech sector employs around 80,000-100,000 people (increasing rapidly)
8. Beauty and Wellness:
- Employs about 7 million people
- Expected to create 10 million more jobs by 2024
9. Food Services:
- It has employed nearly 7.3 million people
- It is projected to generate 9 million jobs by 2024
10. Consumer Services through the Gig Economy:
- Projected 15 million gig workers in various consumer service sectors (2020 Data).
- Projected to rise to 23-24 million workers by 2029-30
Total Projected Current Employment:
From these numbers, we can see that India’s consumer services sector presently employs around 130-140 million people in various sub-sectors.
Future Prospects:
In the next decade it is estimated that this sector will generate around 90-100 million new jobs; hence having a total of around 220-240 million jobs in the years 2030-2031.
Key Issues:
- The data incorporates both formal and informal employment.
- There could be partial overlap across categories, and jobs may possibly be counted in more than one sector in some cases.
- These figures were also influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the majority of the impact fell on the hospitality and retail sectors, whereas recovery and growth are expected to occur over the coming years.
- The rapid digitalization of services often leads to newer job categories that cannot easily be reflected in traditional employment data.
Skills Needed
Skills Needed
The potential job seeker needs the following skills to work in consumer services:
- Verbal and Written Communication Skills: Fluent verbal and written communication is needed for customer service jobs.
- Digital Literacy: Use of digital tools and platforms are increasingly important.
- Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and managing customer emotions is highly required.
- Problem-solving: Rapid thinking and solving problems is something that the customer service business requires.
- Adaptability: Adaptation to changing customers’ needs and emerging technologies has also been highly important.
- Language Skills: Knowledge of English and the regional language is usually expected from the applicants.
- Sales and Marketing: Many jobs in this sector involve upselling or cross-selling.
- Data Analysis: Understanding customer data to improve the service has become more and more important.
Salary Expectations
Consumer services have a great variety in salary scale because of the role-specific, company-specific, and place-specific nature of work. Below will provide an approximate range.
- Entry-Level Customer Service Representative: ₹1.8 – ₹3.5 LPA
- Retail Sales Associate: ₹1.5 – ₹3 LPA
- E-commerce Customer Support: ₹2 – ₹4 LPA
- Bank Customer Service Officer: ₹2.5 – ₹5 LPA
- Hotel Front Desk Executive: ₹2 – ₹4 LPA
- Customer Experience Manager: ₹6 – ₹12 LPA
- Retail Store Manager: ₹5 – ₹10 LPA
- E-commerce Operations Manager: ₹8 – ₹15 LPA
Note: LPA is an abbreviation for Lakhs Per Annum. Salaries are much more in the metro cities and in MNCs.
Factors Driving Job Growth
The major drivers for job growth are the following:
1. Digital Transformation:
Of course, with the growing trend of digital media usage, there’s an ever-growing demand for people who are effective at servicing customers through such mediums. This fact encouraged companies to shift toward the remote and hybrid model in order to acquire talent from across the country.
2. Boom in e-commerce:
The e-commerce websites like Flipcart and Amazon surely need customer service representatives who help to deal efficiently with all inquiries, complaints, and other issues. This segment alone has provided job opportunities to thousands of people so far.
3. Global Outsourcing:
India still is one of the top destinations for international companies that intend to outsource their customer service functions. This has lead tremendous job opportunities, especially in metropolitan cities.
Challenges in the Sector
In spite the positive outlook, the consumer services sector faces many challenges:
- Skill Gap: The gap between the skills that employers want and the ones held by job seekers is rather comprehensive.
- Attrition Levels: Attrition levels in the sector, particularly customer-facing ones, are relatively higher.
- Automation Threat: Increased automation in the delivery of customer service may post a job threat in specific areas.
- Informal Nature of Work: Most of the jobs in this sector especially in retail and hospitality are informal in nature and do not guarantee job security as well as benefits.
- Regional Disparity: Employment is concentrated mainly in urban areas with uneven growth across regions.
Conclusion
The Indian consumer services sector offers a high number of job opportunities across different sectors of businesses. Whether retail, ecommerce, banking or hospitality, the sector is experiencing growth and transformation considerably.
Although there have been disadvantages, such as skill gaps and threats of automation, most assessments of job seekers are positive about this sector with a strong growth trajectory of emphasis on customer experience.
To succeed in this dynamic field one must build a mix of soft skills and digital competencies, while keeping oneself adaptable to the changing needs of the industry. In this new landscape, continuous learning and upskilling will be an important part of navigating the change.
