Customer Service Hero

Customer Service Representative

What sets Hometown Hero apart

We’ve been fixing appliances since 1988, starting out of Doug and Anne Carlson’s garage in Omaha. Today, their grandson Todd runs the company, and we’ve grown into one of the Midwest’s most trusted appliance service companies.

Manufacturers keep asking us to expand, we’ve got a 4.9-star average across thousands of reviews, and the trophies are real: Sub-Zero Best-in-Class Service Provider (2025), Bosch Service Provider of the Year (2025), and UASA Most Professional Servicer, twice.

But none of that matters very much if we don’t take care of the person who calls us.

That’s where you come in.

Success starts with who answers the phone

When someone’s refrigerator quits cooling, their washer is leaking across the floor, or the oven stops working two days before Thanksgiving, the first Hometown Hero employee they talk to probably isn’t a technician.

It’s you.

And this job is a lot more than answering a phone and putting something on a schedule.

You have to figure out what’s actually happening. Ask the right questions. Get the right information. Set realistic expectations. Sometimes calm somebody down. And document everything well enough that the technician walking into that house tomorrow isn’t starting from zero.

The information you gather today can determine whether somebody else succeeds tomorrow.

So if you’re looking for a receptionist job where you answer the phone, read a script, and transfer anything complicated to somebody else, keep looking.

No hard feelings.

Some people are going to call you on their worst day

Nobody calls an appliance repair company because everything in their house is working great.

Sometimes they’re mildly inconvenienced.

Sometimes they just lost a refrigerator full of groceries.

Sometimes there’s water on the floor.

Sometimes they’ve already talked to a manufacturer, dealer, warranty company, their neighbor who “used to repair these,” and three other people before they finally get to you.

And sometimes they’re just having a terrible day.

You can’t take all of that personally.

A great CSR can understand why someone’s frustrated without matching their attitude. You don’t need to win an argument. You need to listen, figure out what we can actually do, explain it clearly, and move things forward.

And sometimes the right answer isn’t the answer the customer wants.

Being helpful doesn’t mean being a pushover. We’d rather give someone an honest answer than make a promise we can’t keep just to get them off the phone.

Being nice isn’t enough

We want friendly people. Of course we do.

But friendly and effective aren’t the same thing.

You can have the greatest phone voice in Nebraska and still create a mess if you put in the wrong address, miss an important symptom, don’t get the model and serial number, or tell a customer something that isn’t true.

Details matter here.

A tiny mistake on a Tuesday afternoon can turn into a technician standing in someone’s kitchen Thursday morning without the information they needed.

The best CSRs listen for the things that don’t quite make sense. They ask another question instead of assuming. They leave good notes. They follow through.

They’re friendly and effective.

You don’t need to know anything about appliances

Seriously.

You don’t need to know the difference between a compressor and a condenser. You don’t need to understand manufacturer warranties. You don’t need to know why we care so much about model and serial numbers.

We’ll teach you.

There’s actually a surprising amount to learn in this job. Eventually you’ll start recognizing manufacturers, warranty rules, common problems, what information technicians need, and which questions help uncover what’s really happening.

You’ll hear a customer describe something and start knowing what question to ask next.

That’s when the job gets interesting.

We can teach appliance knowledge. We can teach our software and systems.

What we can’t easily teach is curiosity.

If you don’t know something, we want your first instinct to be, “How do I figure this out?” instead of, “That’s not my problem.”

We aren’t looking for robots

This isn’t a scripted call center.

We want you to actually talk to people.

One call might be an 80-year-old homeowner who needs you to slow down and explain something. The next might be a busy parent whose refrigerator stopped cooling. Then a property manager. Then one of our dealer partners. Then somebody who’s already mad before you even say hello.

You have to be able to adjust.

Know when to explain. Know when to listen. Know when you can joke a little. And know when someone just needs to hear, “I’ll take care of it.”

Professional doesn’t mean robotic.

“That’s not my job” doesn’t work very well here

Being helpful is a big deal to us.

That doesn’t mean every problem suddenly becomes yours. It means we don’t knowingly leave someone hanging because their question technically belongs to another department.

If you can answer it, answer it.

If you don’t know, find someone who does.

If somebody else needs to handle it, give them enough information to actually handle it.

You’ll work with technicians, managers, manufacturers, dealers, and the rest of the CSR team. Sometimes something will go wrong somewhere along that chain.

We’re not interested in throwing a coworker or dealer partner under the bus to make ourselves look better.

Spend less time figuring out whose fault something is and more time figuring out what happens next.

Business in the front, party in the back

With customers, manufacturers, and dealer partners, we’re the real deal.

Professional. Helpful. Straight answers. No games.

People trust us in their homes and with appliances that range from a $50 used washer to a $50,000 range. We take that seriously.

With each other?

We’re considerably less formal.

We joke around. We give each other a hard time. We have fun. We’re humans working with other humans.

If a buttoned-up, everything-by-the-memo office is what makes you comfortable, we’ll probably rub you wrong.

But if you can be genuinely professional with a customer and still be loose and human with the people sitting next to you, you’ll fit right in.

Ownership matters here

When you tell a customer something is going to happen, you’ve made a promise on behalf of Hometown Hero.

That matters.

When you schedule an appointment, leave a note, send something to another department, or tell a technician something, another person is now depending on you.

We’re not expecting perfection. You’ll make mistakes. So will everybody else here.

Own it.

Communicate it.

Fix what you can.

Ask for help when you need it.

Learn from it and move on.

If your first instinct when something goes wrong is to spend ten minutes explaining why it technically wasn’t your fault, this is probably going to be a frustrating place to work.

The schedule, straight up

This is a full-time, in-office position.

Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

No nights. No weekends. No on-call.

And yes, the in-office part matters.

You’re part of a team. Customers are calling, technicians need information, and the people sitting next to you are counting on you being there.

Reliability isn’t just an attendance statistic. When someone repeatedly isn’t there, their work doesn’t disappear. Somebody else picks it up.