There are obviously a ton of vastly wide-ranging jobs with the title “Customer Service Representative”, so for our post this week in industry-specific resumes, we’ll focus on customer service jobs in call centers. Call centers employ lots of people, and are a great place to find job openings. To work in a call center, you need excellent people skills, to be able to think on your feet, and to be able to find information quickly. Read on to learn how to turn your naturally friendly and outgoing personality into a career, and how to write a customer service representative resume that will impress hiring managers.
What Does a Call Center Customer Service Representative Do?
A call center representative is usually hired by large companies with thousands of customers to take all of the service calls that come in to their main support line. If you’ve ever mashed ‘0’ while listening to an automated recording list your options, the human who finally picked up probably worked in a call center. Customer service representatives generally handle billing, account, and troubleshooting issues. Some jobs are more technical-support focused, where you’ll be talking your customers through the troubleshooting steps for a malfunctioning product. Others are more billing/account-centered, and are more sales-focused. The purpose of the job is almost always to retain existing customers by providing good service to prevent people with questions or problems from switching to a competitor.
A customer service representative is often the ‘the point person’, or ‘face’ of the company for customers, since they’ll never visit the business in person. (Think banks, insurance companies, and utility providers.) People with successful careers in customer service tend to be driven, confident people.
What Does a Call Center Customer Service Representative Resume Show?
A call center operator needs to show a hiring manager that they are comfortable accessing information very quickly via a computer. Many call centers use headsets to take calls while account details and answers to questions are accessed via a proprietary knowlede-base terminal provided by the company to ensure that different operators give out the same information. Many customer service jobs involve sticking to a script to ensure the best service, so a good customer service resume should show that the applicant is skilled at following precise procedures.
A Terrible Call Center Resume Says:
“Properly answered and accurately processed incoming telephone calls regarding Roadside Assistance and other related areas.”
Well, of course you properly answered the incoming calls! Remember, doing your job to expectation is NOT something you can generally brag about on your resume. The reason is that it should be a given that you performed your duties properly and promptly. Simply performing up to par just isn’t setting the bar high enough to impress a hiring manager, who will want to give the job to the candidate that can do their duties without much difficulty, and go above and beyond for their new company. If you take up space in your resume to specify that you didn’t screw up too terribly at your old job, it sets the bar rather low and gives the false impression that you don’t expect very much out of yourself as an employee. I recommend going through your resume, and cutting out EVERY SINGLE adjective that you see, especially “properly”, “accurately”, and “promptly”. Anyone can say that they did their jobs properly, you need to SHOW that you did by sharing the results of your work. For example, how do you know that the calls were accurately processed? Did your customers have a high customer satisfaction rating? Did you receive a commendation from your old boss? Those are the details that you need to share.
“Take action, as necessary, to appropriately respond to needs and concerns.”
This is much too vague. What does ‘take action’ mean? And what ‘needs and concerns’ were they responding too? Again, all call centers are different, so you can’t assume a hiring manager will just know what you did. For all the hiring manager knows, ‘taking action’ just means that the applicant recorded customer complaints. It doesn’t imply that they actually solved any problems, or that they kept the customer happy while doing it. Many call centers track and provide metrics to their service representatives to let them know how they’re doing. Some provide numbers such as how many times a customer had to call back to resolve the same problem, how long the representative spends on the phone on average, and satisfaction survey data. High scores should absolutely be shared in the resume to qualitatively prove the worth of the work being done.
“Processed credit card and member billing transactions via PC.”
This is such a basic job requirement that it either needs to be expanded upon to show some skill or expertise, or to be cut from the resume entirely. A much better way to write this would be to mention how many transactions were completed per day. If the job involved signing up new customers or up-selling, then numbers showing how much business was brought in should absolutely be shared. Sometimes call centers provide rankings for employees based on up-sells and lines of service sold–those rankings are excellent details for a resume. The applicant should also mention the name of the program that they used to process billing information. It is more precise, shows that you are detail-oriented, and demonstrates expertise with industry-standard software.
An Excellent Customer Service Resume Says:
“Created and reserved customized service packages for up to 25 clients simultaneously at a 50-staff travel agency.”
This gives the numbers necessary to establish the context for your previous job. This is crucial, since every single call center job is a bit different depending on the size and industry. Providing numbers indicating call volume also demonstrates concretely that you can handle working quickly and efficiently, which is crucial in a busy call center.
“Gathered client requirements, including budget, schedule, group size, interest, and lifestyle information.”
This is much better than just saying that you “entered customer data”. A customer service provider does much more than just data entry–they must use the information they are given on the spot to create tailored solutions for each customer. If you can list the depth and breadth of information that you collected in your old job, it reveals how you operate and the amount of data that you are able to juggle on a call. For a sales position, it also shows that you close more sales and process fewer returns by finding the most appropriate fit for each customer.
“Created a PDF template to automatically generate detailed custom itineraries for client vacations containing park hours, show schedules, and hotel reservations.”
A line such as this that shows how you went above and beyond is excellent. A hiring manager will want to know how you showed initiative, and created proactive solutions to do your job more efficiently. If you were able to implement process improvements that streamlined not only your own customer interactions, but was used by your coworkers as well, that’s even better. In a hiring manager’s eyes, that translates into time and money saved, lowering the overall cost of hiring you and making you a low-risk investment as a new employee.
The Takeaway
Keep in mind–when a new company reads your resume, what they are really doing is assessing the risk of bringing you on. If they make a bad hire who learns slowly or is unqualified, they lose time and money having to re-train or replace them. With your resume, you aren’t trying to convince a hiring manager that they should “give you a chance” to prove that you can do the job. You want to demonstrate that hiring you is a low-risk investment that will pay dividends for their company with the good work that you do for them. If you remember that while writing your resume and execute correctly, I promise that you will start seeing more interviews and call-backs.
Using these customer service resume examples, you can create a resume that will impress the next person who reads it. And don’t forget–if you want to utilize these tips in a beautiful looking package, we offer a fully-loaded professional resume template, including a full tips and tricks guide written by our full-time editors themselves. The template can give you professional editing results at a DIY price–or, you can get the goods right from the source and give us a call to write your resume for you. We’ll ask you lots of questions to find your strengths and display them in top form in your own custom-written professional resume. We’re always here to answer your resume questions and give you tips.