Hiring Guide
Customer Service Representative
Specific duties of a Customer Service Representative can vary from business to business — along with factors like company culture, work environment, and team dynamics — it’s vital to tailor any job description and interview content to your company’s needs and expectations.
Hiring Guide: Customer Service Representative
Customer Service Representative interview templates
Featuring content from professionals at companies like:
Why you should hire a Customer Service Representative
Customer Service Representatives help companies achieve success by supporting customers to ensure they are satisfied with products and services. Their goals is to maintain exceptional service standards and build a positive company reputation by providing helpful information, answering questions, and resolving problems effectively.
In this hiring guide, we'll provide everything you need to hire a great Customer Service Representative.
Top 12 skills for Customer Service Representatives
Service Focus
Problem Solving
Communication
Composure and Resilience
Sample Customer Service Representative job description
Customer Service Representatives help customers by providing information about the products and services being offered by their organization. They address customer inquiries or complaints, take customer orders and process returns. Customer Service Representatives communicate with clients via telephone, email, social media, web-chat and face-to-face in order to ensure customer satisfaction. Ultimately, their role sustains customer interest and engagement with the organization’s products and services. To achieve this goal, Customer Service Representatives acquire deep knowledge of their organization’s products and services to provide timely solutions for their customers after adequately identifying their needs.
Sample interview questions for Customer Service Representatives
Question 1
Tell me about a time a customer tested your patience. How did you handle the situation?
Alycia Damp, PhD IRHR
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to keep calm in challenging situations
Answer tips
- Shows they can stay calm and professional under challenging circumstances
- Shows they were empathetic and worked to understand the customer's motivations
- Shows they didn't take the situation personally
- Shows they investigated the underlying issue
- Demonstrates a solution-oriented mindset
Question 2
What does 'customer-centric' mean to you? Tell me the ways you are customer-centric in your current role.
Haya Bakour, MSc I/O Psychology
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to put the client's needs at the centre of their work
Answer tips
- Discusses valuing the customer above everything else
- Discusses choosing the customer when making decisions that require trade-offs
- Exhibits customer empathy and an ability to engage in perspective-taking
- Discusses designing strategies around what the customer cares about
- Provides specific examples of how they prioritized customers in previous roles
