Top Career-Boosting Customer Service Representative Skills You Need
How to craft a winning resume for a customer support representative that wins jobs? You’ll need to specify your work experience and education, mention professional accomplishments, and add the right customer service representative skills.
Read our guide to learn what key skills are needed for being a customer service representative!
What Is Customer Service Representative?
In a nutshell, a customer service representative is someone who supports customers and makes sure they remain happy with the quality of service.
What do customer service representative do? This position spans a wide range of duties. It can include:
- Answering phone calls, emails, and chat messages;
- Providing helpful information;
- Answering customers’ questions;
- Handling customer complaints;
- Processing orders and other requests;
- Notifying clients about interesting deals and opportunities;
- Assisting in the order process;
- Managing conflicts to improve customer experiences, etc.
Customer Service Representative Technical Skills
In order to land a job as a customer service representative, an applicant must meet the basic demands of potential employers stated in the job description and demonstrate a wide range of relevant hard and soft skills.
Let’s start with the core technical skills for customer service to include in your resume:
- Customer service;
- Data entry;
- Telecommunication;
- Record keeping;
- Writing;
- MS Office and Google Suite;
- Confident user of a computer;
- Language(s) proficiency;
- Knowledge of various automation and job-related tools.
Customer Service Representative Non-Technical Skills
Apart from the hard skills discussed earlier, every employer will also be looking for a number of soft, non-technical skills of a customer service representative. The list of the soft skills you need to occupy the job may vary depending on the needs of each particular company. However, here are the most crucial skills that every job seeker must demonstrate:
- Excellent communication;
- Continual learning;
- Stress resistance;
- Adaptability;
- Time management;
- Strong work ethics;
- Compassion;
- Attention to detail;
- Problem-solving;
- Persuasion;
- Listening.
If you want to put customer service representative skills on your resume, think about this: To pay someone to write my resume is one of the easy ways I can do for getting a new career. A pro resume writer will describe my experience in a way that not employer will be able to decline my application.
Most Sought-After Skills for Customer Service Representatives
So, what exactly are recruiters looking for in applications for this position? As a rule, most recruiting firms are using the applicant tracking process to weed out candidates that don’t match the opening. That is, you have to tailor the skills on your resume to each particular job description.
Yet, there are some core skills for customer service representative that are almost always there:
- Communication;
- High emotional intelligence;
- Adaptability;
- Listening;
- Time management;
- Tech tools: Jira, Zendesk, Salesforce, Dixa, Talkdesk, etc.
Communication
First and foremost, a customer service representative must know how to address the client’s problem, explain the possible outcome, answer all the questions, and suggest an efficient solution. To handle all these things, one must be able to communicate effectively, which brings us to the number one among all skills for a customer service representative - communication. This includes the ability to communicate both in a verbal and written form, retain a positive attitude, and provide information in a clear manner.
High Emotional Intelligence
The next one among the top skills of customer service representative is high emotional intelligence. In a nutshell, it means the ability to manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of the people you are interacting with. Simply put, to work effectively and help clients solve their issues, you must be able to stay cold-minded and be able to recognize the physical and emotional cues of your customers. This skill is at the core of good customer service.
Adaptability
Adaptability also takes place among the top skills needed for customer service representative. As a customer service representative, you’ll have to deal with customer requests via various channels, including email, chat, and phone. Also, you will have to respond to different kinds of customers, including those who are rather aggressive and disappointed, and still remain calm and patient. Simply put, you will have to adapt to various situations, which is why adaptability is another must-have skill for this job.
Listening Skill
Listening is also among the most sought-after skills needed to be a customer service representative. The role of this skill is hard to undervalue. When trying to answer customers’ questions and solve their problems, it is vital to listen to them and actually hear what they are trying to say. This means being an active listener and paying attention to every single detail. Many companies even provide additional on-site training to help their customer service staff boost their listening skills.
Time Management
The last one of the must-have skills of a customer service rep is time management. When customers contact a business, they typically expect to receive politeness and a very prompt response in return. Even when they don’t leave a message but silently place an order, they still expect prompt feedback. Thus, customer service representatives only have a bit of time to provide feedback to a customer, and that is why strong time management skills are crucial for employees in such roles.
How to Improve Customer Service Representative Skills
The best way to expand your customer service skill set is to get a job in this career field. It will help you practice performing the key responsibilities.
To land a job in the client service field, you will need a resume tailored to the ATS (applicant tracking system). If you need help with it, the experts from SkillHub can write one for you according to your instructions and needs!
Follow Influencers in the Field
One of the best methods to boost your customer service representative qualifications is to learn from the pros. Here are some expert blogs that will come in handy:
- Help Scout - the biggest blog on customer service with plenty of tips and tools.
- CustomerThink - a friendly community focused on providing excellent customer service, with plenty of handy topics.
- ForeSee - technology solutions provider with a useful blog with lots of relevant tips on improving the customer’s journey.
Another way to boost job skills for customer service is to follow authoritative job experts on Twitter like these:
- Shep Hyken
- Steve Curtin
- Kate Leggett
How to Showcase Your Skills
We’ve already answered the question, “what skills does a customer service representative need?” Now, how do you list them?
First of all, you should know that most recruiters will use an applicant tracking system to scan your job application. To get past ATS bots, your resume must contain relevant keywords. Skills are the keywords you’ll need to use.
Take the right keywords from the job description, and then list the strongest points in your resume. Let’s see how it’s done.
Customer Service Representative Skills in a Resume Skills Section
When writing your customer service representative skills resume section, you basically need to make a list of your strongest abilities, including keywords from the job description. If you do this right, your skills section will prove to an employer that you are a qualified candidate who can be a perfect fit for the job.
Here is a real-life example of a skills section that meets the standard customer service representative requirements:
Skills
- Communication
- Excellent customer service
- Time management
- Problem-solving
- Data entry
- Customer needs recognition
- Listening skills
- MS Office
- Jira
- Zendesk
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Adding Customer Service Representative Skills to the Work Experience Section
Apart from listing the top skills a customer service representative needs in a separate section, you can also use another trick to engage the hiring manager. Insert your abilities into the work experience section to stress their value.
Here is an example of how to do this:
- Applied strong data entry skills to reduce errors in customer account information database by 15%.
- Received 100% positive feedback from customer satisfaction surveys.
To Sum Up
Hopefully, our guide helped you answer the biggest questions - “how to become a customer service representative” and “what are customer service skills that one must possess.”
But, how can you get more interviews? SkillHub online resume edit service knows the answer! Our expert writers have years of experience in resume writing. They know how to engage recruiters with your skills and experiences and can create a flawless resume that will help you win the job with ease. So, if you want to ensure success, don’t hesitate and get professional resume helper from our pros now!
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