Customer Service Resumes

Think you may not have much to say in your customer service resume?  Think again!  Potential employers want to read quantifiable and qualifiable information about potential candidates, including those submitting customer service resumes.  Overwhelmingly, this is the type of information that prompts interviews.  Conversely, if you fail to include such data in your career synopsis, you may be bypassed in favor of another candidate who does.

In preparing customer service resumes, applicants can include information such as their previous employer’s mission (i.e., what type of products or services the company offered, their position within their market niche), who comprised their customer base (small businesses, corporate accounts, wholesale, retail, or consumer markets), the geographic range of those customers (globally, nationally, regionally), and what those clients generated in terms of yearly sales volume (dollars produced through direct and indirect sales channels).  Thus, such data enables aspiring employees to make the leap from “We really don’t have much to say” on their customer service resumes to presenting valuable information such as “Supported the customer service function for a $23.5 million per annum manufacturer, the third-largest in the stuffed animal market, servicing national retail accounts.”

Other, relevant data that an applicant may include on a customer service resume might be CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) statistics.  Some companies track these numbers very carefully.  If, for instance, your employer’s CSI averaged 82% in the year before you were hired, and if it measured 88% during the time that you were employed, you can state with honesty on your customer service resume that your efforts contributed to elevating CSI by 6 percentage points, and be sure to add in the actual figures (88% versus 82%).  Hiring managers place a great deal of emphasis on performance metrics when seeking new staff members for vacant positions.  This is true of every job category, including customer service representatives!