Client Service Support Interview Questions And Answers

A candidate who mentions listening carefully, empathizing, and following company policy is a good pick. Red flags that indicate an interviewee is a bad choice include being rude and not having any previous experience dealing with difficult customers. An inexperienced candidate may make a good pick if their other answers are strong, however.

A great resume doesn’t always equal a great representative. Your company has an image it’s trying to project. Look for job seekers whose answers to this question resemble your ideal response. You’re also getting a good look at the job seeker’s analytical skills. Do they come up with a good reply? How long does it take them? Speed is crucial in customer service, particularly if you’re in ecommerce.

In asking the question, the interviewer is actually looking at two aspects of qualifications. Qualifications obtained from a school setting and qualifications regarding past experience in the customer service field. This will help in determining how suitable the interviewee is for the position for which they have applied. The job applicant should outline their academic qualifications relevant to the job. After this, they should point out the experience they have gained from past jobs. This should be done in a way that demonstrates the application of theory to practical skills, focused on handling real life situations.

Customer service is aimed at making the business improve its operations for greater profitability. In effect, staff members should communicate customer tastes, preferences, complains and changing trends to their colleagues and seniors for adjustments and improvements to be made. The interviewee should demonstrate their ability to work, under minimum supervision, within a team. They should leave no doubt as to the benefit they will bring to the business.

Wherever possible be positive, even if your role was short term or didn’t quite work out as expected, as it will have added extra experience or skills to your career history.

Although you are now looking to move on, acknowledge what you learned and what was on offer at the time. Demonstrate good reasons for the decisions you made and show that you understood what was to be gained, or acknowledge what you have learned from your past employer.

Here your interviewer wants to see that you will bring something to their company and not just fade into the background.

Whilst this question does open the floor for you to recite how you once doubled your team’s sales figures, employers are equally interested in hearing about how you have developed and maintained a strong professional network, or how you pride yourself on your reputation for being reliable and hard working.

Whatever you end up talking about, try to keep it short. You don’t want your ego to get in the way of you being offered the job.

Tread carefully with this question. Whilst the truth may be that you only get out of bed every morning in order to pay your rent, this is not what your potential employer wants to hear.

This question gives you an opportunity to discuss what has attracted you to this line of work and what inspires you to persevere through the tough times. In a sales role, this could be the adrenaline rush of meeting daily targets, whilst in a customer-service role, this could be the personal satisfaction you gain through helping people.

Change is an essential part of life in any call centre environment, as the industry strives to achieve best practice for their customers and stakeholders. Have some examples on how you personally managed, or were affected by, some change. What was your focus, what were you aiming to achieve and how did you deliver the outcome? Know what the problems encountered were and what was learned through and following the transformation.

This is your opportunity to assure your potential employer that you are capable of working in line with your objectives and getting the job done on time.

For example:
In my current role, I break down my objectives into daily targets and outline periods of the day when I am going to focus on achieving them. I find this system works well for me and I expect to carry it into my next job.

This question is set to test your ability to identify and analyse customer insight, trends and data, and drive continuous improvement, by identifying and understanding the root cause.

The interviewer will be looking for an example of where you have taken this insight and subsequently developed, implemented and improved your sales process. This could be through the introduction of training, post-sale procedures, a change in marketing communications, or other process improvements, to ensure that the cause of any future complaint is eradicated.

Only you will know if your team really trusts and respects you. Respectful employees will usually make you coffee, hold a door open for you, properly carry out tasks assigned to them and rarely undermine your judgement.

To maintain this level of respect, you should make time to recognise your employees’ efforts, occasionally explain how you reached a solution to a problem (this can help with buy-in for larger changes or projects) and do your best to be consistently level-headed and successful in your judgement – as it only takes one slip-up to undermine your credibility.

During interviews, difficult or awkward questions could come your way. The intention is not to catch you out, but to test how you operate under pressure.

This question is (again) in the format of competency-based interviewing, so remember to outline the specific actions you took to motivate your team, as interviewers want to see evidence of hands-on experience.

Make sure to describe all processes undertaken. For example: Did you use incentives to motivate the team? Did you implement training programmes? Did you improve internal communications to help engage staff? Did you implement or revisit career development plans to make the team feel valued? Did you take the time to understand each individual’s motivations?

Be clear and precise and be sure to convey any previous first-hand experience you have – they will want to feel confident that you can handle similar issues within the new role.

It’s important to think of and talk about a situation that’s relevant for the position you’re interviewing for. Ideally this will have had a positive outcome. By doing this you will help the interviewers to understand why you are a great fit for their team.

You are not required to be an expert on the organisation or role, but a genuine interest and basic understanding is expected. If you are working with a recruitment consultant then they should be able to provide you with extra details and assist with preparation.

In addition, look for and use press releases, corporate and social websites. Ring the call centre to see how they handle your call: do they offer ‘up-sell’, ‘cross-sell’, how was the service? Read the job description to prepare for this question, a few key facts or some knowledge show a genuine interest and commercial awareness.

There will often be a question about how to deal with an angry customer. A typical question would be “Name a time you had to deal with an angry customer” or “Describe a recent situation when you had to handle an angry guest or customer”.

There are two things that they are looking for here. The first is to see what your customer service skills are like. The second is to see if you lose your temper or if you can keep your cool.

It may help to answer that “the customer is always right” and that it is your duty to help customers out of a difficult situation. You can describe the steps where you helped to calm a customer down, show some understanding, empathy, patience etc.

Ideally use an example of where you were able to turn the customer around and then the customer was able to thank you for your effort.

Mention educational qualification, including high-school diploma or higher or any professional coursework. Also specify any relevant job skills such as written and verbal communication expertise, ability to type efficiently, professional demeanor and strong work ethics.

Mention profitable product sales, positive/fruitful customer instruction, customer care with patience and any communication which leads to improved customer service or a sale.

Here you must do some thorough research before the interview. First, find out what are the main products and services that the company provides. Second, do some research into their marketing plans to determine who they are targeting. The annual report should provide some details of their customer base and target market. The aim here is not only to impress them with your knowledge of their product but also to show an understanding of who their customers are.

Say that a good product should not result in customer complaints so products are always most important. If unexpected problems do occur, however, it is important to quickly resolve them.

Customer Service first of all is knowing that the ‘customer is king’, the ‘customer is always right’. Keeping the customer happy is the main role of a customer service agent. As you are usually the first point of contact, how you present yourself and your overall attitude is always remembered. Customer service is all about the customer and the service you provide, it will be your job to build positive relationships with them, making sure that their experience with the company is a confident one and in doing so the overall reputation of the company is increased.

It is a common phenomenon for a customer service representative to encounter a customer that they consider to be difficult. This question will seek to find out how the interviewee would handle customers when pushed to the brink and subjected to pressure. Will they maintain their calm? What image of the business will they project? In order to answer these customer service interview questions effectively, the interviewee should clearly explain how they would listen to customer complains, handle a customer who is wrong and deal with a rude customer. Previous examples of how they handled such situations may be helpful.

Whilst more money, shorter hours or less of a commute are all potential factors for your next role, they are unlikely to make you the ‘stand out’ candidate of the day.

Know what the company are looking for and the potential job available, and align this with your career to date. Highlight your relevant experience, goals and aspirations in line with the role, to showcase why you are the best person for the job.

Morale is infectious – whether positive or negative – and, when working in a team-orientated environment like a call center, it’s important that there is always an air of positively around.

It’s therefore vitally important to ensure that if you’re having a bad day, you contain this and don’t let it influence the morale levels of the team, and in turn the productivity and efficiency of the overall operation.

This question requires you to understand the benefits of setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) objectives and developing action plans.

For example:
In line with the over-arching goals of the company, I would set personal goals for myself and my team which I would subsequently break down into weekly SMART objectives. I would monitor these closely through general in-office communication and a series of team meetings, as well as through scheduling individual appraisal meetings at 3, 6 and 12 month intervals.

As a leader or manager charged with delivering excellent customer feedback, you will know how important it is that customer feedback and insight are monitored, measured and acted upon, whenever appropriate or necessary.

But how about your agents? This question is very much aligned to your engagement, coaching and development skills. You need to think about the culture, communication and interactions you have with your agents.

Discuss how you impart your knowledge and experience to your agents and how you ensure that they can continue to develop the confidence, skills, knowledge and habits that will drive excellent customer feedback with every interaction.