How To Show Customer Service Skills On Resume

Poor customer service is hard to forget. One mistake and y'all are out. Businesses empathise it meliorate than ever. As a result, skilled customer service representatives are in loftier need.

It is articulate that you can't have happy customers without offering amazing support. Catamenia.

But which customer service skills translate into great customer service experiences? Is adept service more than solving a client'south consequence?

In this article:

Client service difficult skills and soft skills
What personality traits make a good customer support rep
How to meliorate client service skills
How to list your service skills on a resume

If you lot want to learn more about delivering excellent customer service, you can also read:

Exercise Yous Know What Client Service Means at All?
What is Customer Retention? 8 Best Strategies [+Apps]
7 Ways to Deliver First-class Customer Service [Examples & Tips]
Customer Success Essentials [Metrics, Stories, & More than]
Customer Support vs. Service [Definition + Software]

Now—

What are the best client service skills and traits?

Here is our list of good customer service soft skills, hard skills, and personality traits.

Soft skills for client service:

Emotional intelligence
Body language
Clear communication
Active listening
Disharmonize resolution
Decision making
Trouble solving
Time management

Difficult skills for customer service:

Foreign language fluency
Technical cognition
Typing speed
Knowledge of CRM software
Microsoft Role/Google Docs Editors
Live chat, chatbots, and electronic mail software

Personality traits for client service representatives:

Conclusion
Responsibleness
Patience

Let'due south talk over each of these customer service core competencies in detail.

1. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize and manage emotions. This refers both to your own emotions every bit well every bit those of your customers.

Loftier levels of emotional intelligence and empathy are critical for dealing with customers. It has go one of the main criteria for employee development. People with high emotional intelligence outperform employees with high IQ but low EQ.

Many modern organizations employ EQ assessments on a regular basis. It is one of the essential customer service skills.

In that location is a very strong correlation between your emotional intelligence and your results every bit a back up agent. On average, high-performing customer service representatives get better scores on emotional intelligence tests. A report by TalentSmart demonstrates that they score 17% higher than technology and 3% higher than sales departments.

Empathy is the most of import component of EQ for customer service jobs. A good agent should be able to see every problem through the customer's eyes. Hither are some useful resources that will help you develop and improve EQ—especially empathy:

13 Best Emotional Intelligence Activities & Exercises
Useful Phrases That Convey Empathy to Customers

2. Positive body language

The role of body linguistic communication in retail customer service is invaluable. However, information technology is difficult to put it into an easily definable framework. Some say that 90% of communication is body language. Others argue that 55% is nonverbal, 38% is the tone of voice, and the remaining 7% are words and their meaning equally such.

It is difficult to measure out the exact impact of your posture or phonation. But controlling your body language is a necessary skill for a client service agent. Unless you are using live conversation or other text-based types of customer service, apparently.

Proper posture might be instinctive for you already. But the ability to communicate through body language is also something you can larn. Make sure to:

Maintain center contact with a customer (but do not stare at them)
Smile and nod to acknowledge customers and what they say
Try to use a calm, low-pitch voice that is not likewise dynamic
Observe the behavior of your customers to read what's on their minds (due east.1000., if they are irritated or in a bustle)

If y'all want to acquire more about conveying the right message through your body linguistic communication or read your customers' body language like a volume, check out:

How to Read Your Client: The Body Linguistic communication of Yes and No
6 Tips for Increasing Customer Satisfaction Through Positive Body Language

3. Articulate communication

Accept you ever tried to brand a written transcript of your chat? Sometimes we may think we are communicating in a clear and effective mode. Merely in fact, almost of our everyday conversations with friends are very chaotic and inclement. Chatting with someone is very different from explaining a complex technical issue.

Cohesive communication is one of the nearly of import items on our customer service skills listing. Fortunately, you can communicate with your customers very effectively using fine-tuned canned responses. Today, there is no need to come up with original answers to every question from scratch and write new messages. You can achieve clear communication by crafting and perfecting your regular set of canned replies.

Evidently, troubleshooting unusual issues will however require your full attention. Y'all can always reach a practiced advice level with customers if you follow a process. For example, yous should break down your instructions into several steps. Ask for feedback afterward each step and rephrase the instructions that were misunderstood. This mode you tin clear upward whatever issue.

Here are two interesting pieces on improving your communication skills for customer service:

15 Tips for Better Customer Service Advice
7 Rules for Constructive Client Service Communication

4. Active listening

Agile listening is a technique that uses paraphrasing and reading non-exact conversation cues. It gives you more insights nearly customers and allows yous to follow their train of idea. By request follow-up questions you ensure that you are on the same side.

Our contempo client experience survey shows that businesses are very bad at listening to customers. But 17% of customers believe that online businesses listen to them. Information technology is a little bit surprising since the trouble is easy to address. You tin can instantly improve the quality of customer experience by using proven formulas.

Some of the virtually powerful phrases that y'all tin ask to steer customer service conversations in the correct direction are:

Could you tell me a little flake more?
It sounds like y'all are experiencing [X], am I correct?
I'm deplorable you lot have to get through that
It would make me angry too
Let's make sure that I've got everything correct

Past using active listening skills y'all prove a customer that you understand them. It allows you to make an instant connection. Active listening helps to convey that their problems are your problems too and you lot feel responsible for finding a solution.

Further readings to ameliorate your customer service agile listening skills:

How to Heed to Customers Effectively
20 Best Practices For Live Chat Etiquette

5. Disharmonize resolution

In client service, conflict resolution and de-escalation techniques are used every solar day. To deliver proficient customer service, an agent should be a expert negotiator and know how to calm down a raging bull.

Being able to deal with customer complaints and aroused customers can be hard at first. Only y'all can learn some useful statements and tricks to turn those situations around:

Stay calm and don't debate, fifty-fifty if you are right
Withhold your judgment and continue your opinions to yourself
Use empathy, repent to your customers, and show that yous understand how they experience
Offer a solution and describe the end result
Provide different alternatives and empower the client to make the ultimate decision
Shift the focus of the chat on achieving the outcomes described before
Make sure that the problem has been solved
Thank your customer for providing feedback and bringing the problem to your attention

If you want to discover out more near resolving difficult situations with unhappy clients, read:

How to Handle Customer Complaints [10+ Response Examples]
How to Bargain With Angry Customers in 5 Like shooting fish in a barrel Steps [Tips & Examples]

six. Determination making

Working equally a client support agent requires thinking on your feet. You don't have to ever make the best conclusion. But y'all need to be decisive and brandish confidence. Customers want to exist taken care of—and they won't trust you if you don't know what you lot are doing. You lot should, at the very least, endeavour to brand a good impression.

If you want to make a practiced impression and make the best decisions, continue the following things in listen:

Focus on your goal. Recollect what is the ultimate reason why customers accomplish out to you.
Brand decisions fast. Try to develop a addiction of making decisions speedily. Even if something goes wrong, it will be a valuable lesson for the future.
When in doubtfulness, dig deeper. If you lot can't make up one's mind on the right solution, it may hateful that you don't take enough information. It's a proficient idea to ask the customer for details.
Ask for assist if you need it. Consult with someone who knows more than nigh the topic if you still tin can't determine on your best option.

Exist careful! Being decisive does non mean that you tin can make capricious judgments. You should make sure what kind of decisions y'all are allowed to make and which ones are beyond your competencies. Your hereafter customer success manager should prepare a well-defined policy. Situations such as giving discounts or accepting returns should be spelled out. Merely stick to the rules.

7. Problem solving

The primary job of a customer support amanuensis is to solve the problems of customers. And you can't really practice that if you are non willing to experiment, analyze, and try out different approaches. Sometimes you'll accept to be very creative and think outside the box.

Comics presenting a job interview conversation — Source: www.dilbert.com

You can solve anything if you break down the procedure into smaller steps. Follow this blueprint to deal with whatever challenge thrown your mode:

Describe the problem in your ain words and brand certain that you understand it
Check if someone solved a similar problem already (and how they did it)
Ready a listing of possible solutions and analyze their pros and cons.
Eliminate the near difficult, expensive, or otherwise impossible and prohibitive ideas
Decide your main course of action and a backup plan
Put the program into activity and run across if it works. Try to draw additional conclusions and go dorsum to footstep 1 if it doesn't.

The nigh important part of problem-solving is identifying what the problem really is. Y'all should ever try to dig deeper and understand why a customer wants to accomplish something.

For instance, people keep asking how to trigger automatic letters with Tidio's JavaScript API. Merely when our agents ask some follow-upwards questions information technology turns out that those users don't demand the API. They can create chatbots to attain their goals instead.

8. Fourth dimension management

Multitasking is a myth. People can't really handle many processes simultaneously. Just what they can do is divide their time into smaller chunks and use it more effectively. Information technology is another important customer service skill.

Tip: There is a very simple way to help your customers around the clock. Many businesses improve customer feel with AI chatbots. In some situations, you don't need a customer support squad at all. 1 bot tin practice the task. Find out how to offset with Tidio chatbots hither.

Just client service is commonly very hectic in itself, right? Do nosotros need to organize our fourth dimension and work at all? Isn't it merely well-nigh dealing with incoming calls as they pile up?

Well, things get complicated if you handle one "important" case for iii hours and try to take hold of upward past speeding up during the rest of the twenty-four hours.

Information technology may be a good idea to kickoff using time and task management techniques. For example, the Eisenhower Matrix can help y'all decide which tasks to prioritize.

Effort to measure how long it takes to provide assistance to an average client. And so y'all can determine which cases take more effort and require more than time. Once you start measuring it, you tin discover many patterns and insights. You'll larn that:

You can delegate some cases to other agents
Information technology'due south better to take regular breaks than to do customer service marathons
Setting benchmarks and allocating time slots improves your efficiency
It is perfectly fine to be assertive and provide customers with resources instead of direct supervision

Time is a critical gene in client service. You should know when to devote it to providing help and when it'southward better to focus on other tasks.

Read more well-nigh time management as a tool in your customer service skillset:

half dozen Time Management Tips for Call Centre Agents

ix. Foreign linguistic communication fluency

Customer service outsourcing is extremely pop. In that location are high chances that you lot are not a native speaker of the language that you'll use to conversation with customers. Working on your spoken language fluency is the single most of import hard skill for client service.

Interestingly, you lot don't need to worry if yous take a slight emphasis. Being able to communicate effectively is more important than perfect pronunciation. Using the correct intonation and stressing critical words is something yous should really pay attention to.

You shouldn't obsess about using avant-garde vocabulary. Instead, try to make your language sound more than natural by:

Using filler words such also/um/correct/let'south meet to make your sentences less choppy (just don't overdo it)
Speak out loud as y'all do and tape information technology on your mobile—listen to the recording to catch your mistakes
Utilise a chatbot like Chirpy Central to practice "neverending" conversations online in real-time

If you lot want to brush up on your English speaking skills, cheque out this document provided by Maryland Department of Labor:

English for Speakers of Other Languages: Customer Service Curriculum

x. Technical cognition

People don't call customer service for fun. They normally need technical support. This ways that y'all must sympathise the ins and outs of your product. And—allow'southward face it—they are more likely to need assistance with their malfunctioning smartphone than a not-electrical device.

Skillful customer service agents need to be tech-savvy. There is no way around information technology, peculiarly if you want to work in a corporate environment. The majority of client service agents have to expect things up on their computers and solve technical issues.

Being able to use a calculator doesn't count as a technical skill. Y'all shouldn't list it on your resume because it is obvious that yous should be able to use it. Focus on enumerating specific software tools and technologies instead.

Understanding how products piece of work is an essential customer service skill for SaaS companies. For example, our customer service representatives need to have extensive knowledge on:

Ecommerce platforms and technologies
Chatbots and conversational interfaces
Marketing automation and e-mail marketing
Integrating live chat widgets on websites

If yous are looking for a customer service job, it may be a good idea to show that you are familiar with the products that the visitor offers. Information technology shows that you lot are curious and that learning new things doesn't scare you. Doing it before your bodily production noesis training sends a practiced signal.

11. Typing speed

This customer service skill is pretty straightforward. The faster y'all type, the faster you respond. It has a straight bear on on your functioning as an amanuensis and makes your life a lot easier. This skill is likewise quite easy to acquire and measure.

Typing speed is unremarkably measured by multiplying your accuracy and the number of words typed per minute. For case, if my typing speed is 70 words per minute but my accuracy is 92% (words without a typo), my adapted typing speed is 64 WPM (70 WMP ten 92%).

Typing speed benchmarks:

Ho-hum: beneath 20 WPM
Average: xx-xl WPM
Fast: 40-sixty WPM
Professional typist: threescore-90 WPM

Some companies make information technology a formal requirement and may assess your typing speed during an interview. For example, to work at Concentrix your typing speed should be at least 35 words per minute.

Become to this website to check your typing speed:

Online Typing Speed Test

12. Knowledge of CRM software

Customer service representatives unremarkably use CRM software solutions such every bit Zendesk or Zoho. The tools are quite like and getting used to them is only a matter of time. All the same, if you lot have experience with a dedicated customer service app, your chances are brighter.

Some of the best apps that companies use include:

Tidio
Zendesk
Salesforce
HubSpot
Zoho CRM
Airtable

To observe out more, cheque out our ranking of the best customer database software.

Make sure you are not confusing CRM software with project management and squad collaboration apps such as Jira, Asana, Trello, or Slack.

xiii. Microsoft Part/Google Docs Editors

Talking to customers makes upwardly the bulk of your work as a customer service rep. But what virtually the residual? Well, dealing with documents, reports, and presentations is a pretty safe bet.

Sooner or later, you'll be asked to prepare some kind of a spreadsheet or a dashboard with your results. Or write a detailed onboarding program for new inferior employees. Or help with presenting your company'south quarterly metrics.

The majority of businesses collect client feedback past copy/pasting it into an Excel or Google Sheets file. Organizations tend to prefer Google Docs Editors because they make sharing documents easier.

Make certain to know how to create bones documents in:

Google Docs (Word culling)
Google Sheets (Excel culling)
Google Slides (PowerPoint alternative)

14. Live chat, chatbots, and email software

The customer service landscape has inverse drastically over the concluding several years. Today, a alive chat customer service agent equipped with quick replies and AI chatbot administration tin can do the piece of work of x telephone call center agents.

Why is live chat so effective? Think of using a sort of autopilot—decision-making and adjusting the exchange of messages rather than writing them from scratch. An agent is supervising the customer service flow and intervenes but if they have to.

It is likewise the favorite communication channel of virtually 46% of customers. Tools like Tidio allow y'all to switch betwixt channels and provide omnichannel service. You tin commencement a conversation through a alive chat widget, continue it by exchanging emails, and cease on Facebook messenger. And you can manage everything in 1 dashboard. Firing upward chatbots or canned letters is a matter of two clicks.

xv. Determination

Determination is the ultimate personality trait for a client service agent. You must be able to persevere and go to the bottom of a problem even when customers phone call you lot names. And you must constantly piece of work on your customer service skills to increase customer satisfaction levels.

You need empathy to sympathise customers, but it can besides have its price on your mental residue. At offset, the corporeality of piece of work and stress tin exist overwhelming.

Just—

If you lot are determined to get the extra mile and deliver amazing experiences to customers, it will give y'all more than motivation. Subsequently some do, you'll learn to get everything under control.

You tin can measure if you are a adamant person past taking a test designed by Angela Ducksworth. Your Dust Score will help yous sympathize if you need to work on the strength of your character and perseverance. For example, West Point cadets usually score college than Ivy League undergraduates.

16. Responsibility

This i may sound like a cliché. Responsibility is something that the majority of chore applicants declare as their strong side. For pretty much every position imaginable.

But, in client service, it is really crucial that you handle every instance from start to terminate and never leave your clients in the nighttime.

The common tasks and customer service requirements include:

Managing a loftier volume of incoming letters (or calls)
Edifice relationships with customer
Providing accurate information and answering customer questions
Meeting customer problem resolution quotas
Documenting customer interactions
Managing customer accounts
Increasing client retentivity

You wouldn't want an irresponsible person to accept intendance of them all, would you?

17. Patience

Customer service professionals should be patient. They must exist able to utilise positive language even if they are dealing with a frustrated customer.

Or if they are exchanging messages with people who take their time to type their messages in.

Incidentally, you lot can have a peek at customers' letters even before they send them!

Yous can find more than nigh premium features offered by one of the top client service platforms here.

How to listing customer service skills on a resume

OK, we have the complete listing of excellent customer service skills. But you are probably asking yourself—which skills should I put on my resume for customer service? Surely I can't put "prissy moves and good body language" right next to my Microsoft Excel proficiency!

Skills for customer service resume:

Agile listening skills
Adaptability
Attentiveness
Customer orientation
Disharmonize resolution
Cantankerous-selling and up-selling techniques
Familiarity with de-escalation strategies
Dandy control of the language
Good communication skills
Interpersonal skills
Patience
Positive attitude
Proactive arroyo
Problem-solving skills
Cocky-command
Loftier sense of responsibility
Team player
Time management

Hither is an instance of a resume that highlights customer service skills and qualifications:

Customer service skills resume

John Doe
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 202 555 019
New York, NY

Resume Summary

A customer service representative with vii+ years of experience and good customer service skills. Prissy presentation, customer-centric arroyo, and familiarity with disharmonize resolution techniques. Ready for new challenges and increasing client retentiveness of your business organization.

Work Experience

Customer Service Representative, CurbServic
New York, NY
January 2016–June 2021

▫️ Answered 50+ calls per day
▫️ Managed social media conversations
▫️ Helped build customer relationships
▫️ Onboarded new customer service team members

Client Service Specialist, Call Point
Brookhaven, NY
August 2013–January 2016

▫️ Handled the live chat and e-mail communication with premium customers
▫️ Helped to organize the processes within the support team
▫️ Designed a client support chatbot to reduce the workload by 40%
▫️ Collected feedback through customer satisfaction surveys

Education

Bachelor of Arts in English
The Borough of Manhattan Customs College
Graduation: 2013

Skills

✔️ Active listening
✔️ Positive linguistic communication
✔️ Upwardly-selling
✔️ Chatbot automation
✔️ 60+ WPM typing speed
✔️ Google Docs Editors
✔️ Salesforce
✔️ Tidio
✔️ Jira

Check out the elevation customer service interview questions and answers to better prepare yourself and heave your chances of getting the job.

Yous can go an crawly agent even without much task feel. Typical resume skills for customer service include emotional intelligence, empathy, and clear communication. The mode y'all approach other people is more important than working for 10 years at a specific company.

If you need more than tips on deciding which skills you lot should put on your client service resume, here is a useful guide:

What Skills to Put on a Resume

Takeaway

Building a client back up team is extremely difficult. If you see several of the requirements mentioned in this article, you are already among the top. And you tin can improve the remaining client service skills through practice.

Customer service representative skills that you should focus on:

Empathy
Self-command
Trunk linguistic communication
Voice tone/cohesive writing
Active listening

If you are looking for a chore in customer service, brand sure to mention at to the lowest degree some of them on your resume.

Even so, yous tin always enhance the effectiveness of your client service efforts by using the correct tools. Want to try an app that turns mediocre customer service skills into keen customer experiences? Run across what happens if yous accept great client service skills already.