Customer contact employees (CCEs) are the initial point of communication for dissatisfied customers. The role of CCEs is increasingly critical to retaining distressed consumers as skills and competencies, technical know-how, understanding of customer needs and emotions, and professional attitude of CCEs are instrumental in addressing customer concerns. This paper explores the moderating effects of gender and industry on employee social, emotional, and professional competencies in the Indian service sectors. The research used survey-based data from 210 CCEs of three service sectors (organized retail store, automobile and hotel). Two-way ANOVA was used for the analysis of the data. Results highlight that gender and industry display differential effects on employee competencies. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there is no study in the past which have studied the set of employee competencies (social, emotional and professional) in the context of service recovery and investigated the moderating role of gender and industry.