Delivery Interview Questions And Answers

This question is designed to identify whether you know your own management style - a lot of people don't. They don't know how they like to be managed, or how they manage.

I want to know if you work best alone, or in a team. Are you somebody who gets up and talks to your colleagues, or do you prefer to send an email? Are you easily distracted? You need to understand how you liked to be managed, and if you're going for a management position, what your own management style is.

This is also sometimes known as SOAR, where Task is replaced by Objective.

☛ Situation: Describe the situation.
☛ Task: Describe what task was required of you.
☛ Action: Tell the interviewer what action you took.
☛ Result: Conclude by describing the result of that action.

Be positive about your actions throughout your response and do not make up an example as you will not come across as believable. If you cannot think of good examples instantly, ask the interviewer for a moment or two to think about the question and then give your answer.

To answer this question you must have researched the company. Reply with the company's attributes as you see them and how your qualities match them.

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.

Many interviewers will ask you to name your strengths and weaknesses. Typically, people find it easier to express their strengths, but struggle when it comes to identifying even one weakness. Part of the reason for this may be that they do not want to disclose a particular weakness, as this may result in them failing to be successful in getting the job.

A good initial answer (bearing in mind you are applying for a telephone position) to the 'strengths' part would be "I have been told that I am an excellent communicator, especially on the telephone, but I feel I have good interpersonal skills generally and find it easy to get along with all sorts of people".

For weaknesses you need to think of something which is really a strength but put it across as a weakness. It is also important to make it clear what you are doing to address that 'weakness'.

A good example would be "I am a very conscientious worker and I get irritated by colleagues who don't share this value and take any opportunity to take time off work or do the minimum required when they are there. I am learning, however, that these people generally get found out and I leave it to my supervisor to recognise these problems and address them".

An answer such as this would probably make the interviewer think "well that's not such a bad thing, actually".

Here your interviewer wants proof that you will tackle problems head on and not just bury your head in the sand.

A strong answer will clearly demonstrate a problem, an action and a solution.

For example:

Problem: When I was first promoted to team leader, I consistently struggled to ensure that my team achieved their sales targets on a Friday.
Action: I sought the advice of more experienced team leaders to find out how they motivated their teams through the Friday slog.
Solution: Acting on the advice of the other team leaders, I implemented a combination of incentives over the next few weeks and successfully boosted my team's sales figures.

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.

This is your opportunity to tell your potential employer what keeps you focused. Possible answers include:

☛ Breaking your workload up into daily or hourly targets to ensure that the next small success is never too far away.
☛ Living a healthy life-style. Eating the right foods and drinking lots of water in the office can have a big impact on your concentration levels.
☛ Motivating others and promoting a positive atmosphere in the office.

In asking this question, your potential employer is looking to see that you are prepared to go above and beyond the call of duty when the company needs you.

But you have to be careful when answering, as it is easy to fall into the trap of slagging off your current employer or seeming disorganised. Your interviewer does not want to hear how your current boss failed to provide you with resources or that you once pulled an all-nighter to meet a university deadline.

An ideal answer will centre round the busiest time of your company's year (i.e. the Christmas rush in retail). In your example you should outline the reason for your stretched deadline and say what you did to ensure that you met it.

For example:

Whilst working in retail over the Christmas period, there was dramatic increase in stock which needed processing. To ensure that I continued to complete my daily tasks over this time period, I frequently started work at 5am rather than 7am.

Morale is infectious - whether positive or negative - and, when working in a team-orientated environment like a call centre, it's important that there is always an air of positivist 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.

I think the most important part about this question - and most of the others - is that they're behavioural questions, so we want to see examples of where they've done it before. You can't just fluff it - you need to give an example.

So in this scenario, I'm interested in hearing how the information was delivered. What did you take into consideration first? Did you collect all the facts and have all the necessary information? What conflicts were there, if any? And how did you deal with those conflicts? Finally, what was the outcome?

There are two ways to give bad news. You can do it while considering those around you, or you just deliver it not thinking about the outcome.

This is my favourite question, some people are so honest! Some people enjoy losing their temper - which might be fine in your living room but not in the office.

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.

It is vital to have clear objectives before initiating conversation with the customer; what is your end goal? Ensure you are aware of the parameters, rules and regulations within the company. For example, if the issue is over money, can you refund it? What else can you offer to pacify the customer?

It is important to remain calm, confident, be clear and always remember to ask questions. The interviewer is looking for a patient and composed response. If you are still unsure about how best to approach role-plays contact your local recruitment consultant who should be able to offer you thorough advice.

As part of my regular team monitoring, I assess all advisers call quality in order to measure them against the relevant KPIs. When reviewing calls for one adviser, I noticed a trend where the advisor was quite abrupt with callers. I scheduled a meeting in private with that adviser, which I prepared for by reviewing supporting information (including their performance statistics for the month).

I adopted a supportive style as I raised my concerns with the individual regarding their approach with customers, and confirmed their awareness of the business expectations regarding excellent customer service. I sensitively discussed with them any reasons they felt they were unable to deliver this, and emphasized the balance which needed to be maintained between quality and quantity. I adopted a coaching style to enable the adviser to work through any barriers and identify solutions, agreed reasonable and tangible expectations for improvement, arranged appropriate support and scheduled weekly meetings to review their performance against these expectations. As a result, the advisor improved their performance and now consistently achieves all targets.

Before your interview, you should have researched the company and seen a full job description. This information will be key to how you answer this question and show that you have made a considered application.

You need to try and align the experience gained from your current role to some of the challenges or responsibilities of the role you are applying for. Keep it to a few clear bullet points where you can.

Also think about where you are at your happiest or best. The role you are applying for may be in a new field or industry, but you may already have many of the transferable skills required.

You then need to be able to concisely explain what you can bring to the role and demonstrate how some of the skills you have (making passing reference to some of the experience you have just mentioned) would make you a good fit for this role.

This is an opportunity for you to show off your research on the role and company.

Talk about the benefits the company has to offer and how they suit you at this point in your career. For example, if you are joining the company as a graduate, discuss how you plan to utilise their highly-structured training scheme.

Also comment on the company's reputation and try to make reference to a recent success you have seen on their website.

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.

This question is a test of character and is especially important if you are being interviewed for a management role.

An ideal answer will demonstrate that you are able to support your team, even when things don't go according to plan.

For example:

Whilst I was working in a fast-food restaurant, an unexpected coachload of football supporters came through the door. What followed was a hectic half-hour as the few staff we had on struggled to serve the high influx of customers.

To motivate my team, I came out of the back office and signed onto a till in the middle of the counter. From that position, I could support my team either side of me with phrases like 'you're doing well, Kelly' whilst helping to offset the work load.

When the rush was over, I congratulated everyone on their efforts and brought chocolates in for my team the next day.

This is about customer service skills. I want you to tell me how you went the extra mile. I want to hear how you responded to the problem by doing something so positive it converted the customer, so the problem was resolved and the customer continued to work with you and recommend you.

I'm interested in hearing whether or not you lost your cool, how you felt about the situation - were you able to step outside of what makes you angry in order to solve the issue?

Really, I'm looking for a variety of approaches to problems here. I want to hear whether you're consultative? Or do you race ahead and do your own thing? Are you collaborative? Do you engage other people?

One way of dealing with this type of question is to use the CAR approach. CAR stands for Context, Action, Result. It helps you to structure your answer like a mini essay.

Context is your introduction, where you describe the scenario you faced, the date and the place. The Action forms the main body and should be the longest part of your answer. The Result is the conclusion and like the introduction, should be quite short.

☛ Context: Describe the situation and the task you were faced with, when, where, with whom?
☛ Action: How? What action did you take? Sometimes people focus on what the group did without mentioning their individual contribution.
☛ Result: What results did you achieve/conclusions did you reach/what did you learn from the experience?

This is often an opening question, as it allows you to use one of your strongest examples and may help you relax. For the interviewer, it is also an indication of where your natural focus or achievements may be - people development, process, cost reduction, change etc.

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.

Having given your strengths and weaknesses, you are then likely to be asked to give examples of when you have displayed this behaviour. Your credibility will plummet if you cannot give an example of the strengths you have stated. With the strengths listed above, a good response would be: "In my present job, I am often asked to handle difficult customer situations because my supervisor knows that I will handle them politely, efficiently and diplomatically and therefore only a few cases would ever get referred to her. Also, because of my strong interpersonal skills, I have often been asked to buddy-up with new team members, to make them comfortable in their new role at the earliest stage possible".

When asked to give examples on the weaknesses, you need to think very carefully, and plan in advance what your response will be, as many people dig a very deep hole here. A good response to the weakness quoted would be: "I had a situation once where I knew that a more experienced colleague was regularly absent from work following nights out drinking, but she would say that she had a migraine. When this happened my workload increased significantly. I undertook this willingly but I must admit I was annoyed that this person was taking advantage of me and the company. However, I decided to let the supervisor do their job and just get on with mine. In quite a short space of time, the issue was addressed and the problem was resolved".