Customer service is under paid, under appreciated and over worked.
I work in sales and without my customer service team there is no way I could do what I do effectively.
I make the company a lot of money and the back bone to everything is the customer service team.
They deal with customer complaints, enter orders, liaise with procurement, warehouse, transport and the list goes on. Their stress levels are high and reward is non existent.
Last year one of my favorite CS people asked for a $5k pay raise after not receiving anything for a number of years. The company has been growing steadily and she definitely deserved it. She had been with the company for nearly 5 years and was on $60K. For context a graduate role in this company pays approx $55k upon entry.
The final say always comes down to the CEO even though he is disconnected and doesn't deal with the day to day. To be fair her manager fought for her and pushed to get her the pay rise.
It was refused. I helped her find another job in our industry in sales (she pretty much did a sales role with everything she had to do) and told her to say she was already on $90K.
She found another job with a six figure pay and left 2 months after she was denied the raise.
We had to hire another 3 people to handle her workload.
Another 5 people left the company over the next 6 months (after finding new jobs) because of the way she was treated.
It also pissed off me and a lot of other people in the business who's attitudes to work completely changed.
Respect your workers and listen to what they have to say.