Writing a Customer Service Resume (Free Templates)

Understanding the full role of a customer service representative would greatly help you draw up a resume for the job. Beyond listening to customer inquiries and complaints, you would also need to stimulate sales through purchase handling and cold calling.

What shape should your customer service resume take? The primary you would want to do is prioritize your customer service skills; try to emphasize it everywhere you can and not just in the skills section.

Your employer needs to know how much success you’ve had with customer service as a whole. The article would put you through the basics of writing effective customer service, as well as samples and tips to help your piece stand out.

A customer service resume needs to have depth; it enables the employer to achieve his/her hiring aims, while you get the job you deserve. Below are guidelines on what a customer service resume means, and its impact on the onboarding process.

A customer service resume is a document that contains competencies in the core CSR (Customer Service Relations) functions. It highlights the applicant’s experience and successes in customer troubleshooting, complaint resolution, product promotion, and general customer instructions.

Statement of formal education is not compulsory in a customer service resume (or any resume for that matter). However, it is good practice to include traditional degrees – preferably in marketing and communication; it could edge you in a competitive application process.

There are far-reaching effects of a well-written customer service resume, not just for the applicant, but for the employer seeking the best talent for the job description. Since customer service has a broad scope, the more related skills you have put down in the resume, the more likely the resume gets the employer’s preference.

An excellent CS resume illustrates your solid communication skills, together with scenarios and accomplishments where you’ve been able to use it. It would also include the not-so-popular skills that are immensely beneficial to the organization; employers would consider attention to the details peculiar to the kind of customer service you are applying.

Following are the steps to craft a professional customer service resume:

The first step to writing any customer service resume is to master how to write an objective for a resume that would be attractive enough for the hiring managers. You would have to make a relevant theme that would resonate throughout the body of the resume.

In the objective, state how well you understand customer relations and their impact on the business. Show the employer that you acknowledge that customers are the main priority in any business; since you would be the interface between the company and the customer, iterating the importance of the customer immediately gives the hiring manager a positive impression of your resume.

Furthermore, include your intentions to make customer autonomy your goal as you apply for the CSR position. Employers generally value customer autonomy, and would prefer candidates who mention it in their overview section of their resume.

The goal is to try to teach customers about the product, instead of explaining it to them; the approach has the double benefit of reducing the workload stress on the customer service team, and the customers can go ahead to advertise the products by word of mouth, due to the ample knowledge they now have about it.

Hiring managers understand that new talents might need to learn (and relearn) on the customer service job over time, so it would help if you stated your eagerness and willingness to acquire new product and technical knowledge on the job.

Finally, express your willingness to thrive in a different climate; it follows whether you’ve had prior experience in customer service or not. Employers would naturally seek candidates who would get into the workflow rhythm in as minimum time as possible.

Tips for writing the objective

The following are tips that could help you get an idea on where to begin to write a customer service resume;

• Keep it short: Bear in mind that brevity is vital; going on and on about your relevant skills and achievements makes the resume lose its efficacy. The goal is to mention – in short paragraphs – skills that are “worth mentioning“.
• Be Clear: It would mean that you have to be as straightforward as possible; more than compensating for the shortness of lines, clarity allows you to get to the point as quickly as the hiring managers would prefer.
• Explain your skills briefly: You’ll have to briefly explain your top skills; follow the tried-and-true method of mentioning each prowess, then describe a bit to keep the formality and organization of the resume.

It is essential to add the customer service skills you have. As there are several subsections to customer service relations, you would need to distinguish between skills to determine how much qualification suits the employer’s needs.

• Technical Skills: The Technical skills are somewhat general, which means that it should come first in your customer skillset list. It portrays the practical aspects of the job, such as complaints resolution, request handling, and the customers’ actual interaction.

Since customer service is diverse, and you have subdivisions such as food store customer service, retail or IT customer service, etc., you would want to pick out the technical skills peculiar to what the department demands. For instance, you could list menu handling and recommendation as one of your technical skills in a resume aimed at a customer service position in a food chain store.

• Interpersonal Skills: Following your technical skills, you need to state how well you think you’ve been able to relate with the other staff members; it is essential for the employer, as he/she seeks a streamlined transition in the workforce. You would need to mention how well you’ve been able to handle chain commands and instructions, and how efficiently you pass on your finished job to the next representative
• Problem Solving Skills: Don’t leave out your problem-solving skills. Employers generally care about how you can solve customer service issues more than the other attributes. You’d do well to include some of your experiences, and how you could resolve the problems with your problem-solving skills.
• Adaptability: State how well you can adapt to various situations. Given that the customer service would entail interacting with real people with complaints and inquiries, you would need to convince the hiring managers of your adaptability to unpredictable scenarios.
• EQ Level: Further down the resume, you might add some information about your EQ (Emotional Quotient) levels. You don’t need to mention it, but it helps your chances when you state how strong and versatile you control your emotions.
• Improvisation: How well can you “wing it”? Employers might not tell you until much later after onboarding, but companies typically cherish resourceful candidates. Include in your resume how you’ve been able to make do with limited available resources in the past, and where you’ve successfully improvised.
• Patience: You might have gotten the idea that a great deal of patience when handling CSR duties, therefore you need to state your high patience levels in your planned resume. The hiring managers would appreciate your being upfront about it (instead of waiting for the question “how patient are you?” in a subsequent interview). Also, illustrate practical cases where your reservoir of patience came in handy to avert a sticky situation.
• Time Management: Companies have all come to expect CSR staff to have excellent time management skills. The job description would entail the team regularly working against deadlines and time limits. It would be helpful if you included the several ways you’ve been able to categorize projects and tasks due to practice time management skills.

Need a starter for your customer service resume? You can try out some of our resume templates by downloading them on our website.

Going through the basics makes an impressive resume. However, you could do some extra tips to smoothen out the output and possibly give you a substantial edge over the other candidates.

Below are some bonus tips to help you write a peach of a resume;

Analyze your top skills

While others might chuck their skillset and accomplishments in a resume, you could do better by analyzing your skills. It is imperative, given that resume are more general than, curriculum vitae. It means that you’d have to take the extra step to prioritize the more essential skills to the job description.

To make the drafting phase easier, have a list of your skills in their correct order at the ready, before putting them into the final resume.

Optimize your document

Candidates’ resume would have to go through an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) software to filter the bulk before getting to the human part of the hiring process. Optimizing your resume allows the software to rank your document higher than the rest, and gives a better chance of getting to the next level.

Pro Tip: Use relevant keywords all over the document, and explore other areas where you can “entice” the applicant tracking system.

Write a summary statement

A summary would assist you in achieving the goal of keeping the entire resume short and precise. Generally, you could save a little summary for each of the points you would be evaluating. It would enhance readability and allow the hiring system to get to the point more quickly.

Keep it relevant

You don’t want to write about cooking experiences in a customer service resume. It is essential to keep the theme relevant to customer service, as there is a tendency to fill the document with all related and unrelated accomplishments and skills. You should prioritize the most pertinent detail and work down from there.

Focus on your accomplishments

Rather than elucidate the skills you have, come from the angle of cases where you’ve successfully applied your skill to earn an accomplishment. The edge immediately shows when the employer gives preference to relevant achievements which they can replicate in their company, rather than a list of skills.

Strong bullet points

When drafting the resume, you would quickly realize that you would have to fit in numerous points. Bulleting comes in handy to organize your headings, and draw attention to the details you prioritize. Ensure that the bullet points are catchy, and their contents are straight-to-the-point.

Use of action verbs

Action verbs do a great job at amplifying your capacity and abilities. You could generously use action verbs all through your customer service resume to make your application unique from the others.

Some of the examples of action words you use are;

• Listen
• Maintain
• Respond
• Supply
• Provide
• Implement
• Consult
• Conduct
• Post
• Manage

Writing an effective customer service resume determines a significant part of the hiring and onboarding process. While it requires dedication, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to make the document bulky with irrelevancies. Above-listed is some of the steps and tips we have tried when writing a customer service resume. They aim to point you in the direction of writing a resume that stands a chance in the face of stiff competition.