Customer service refers to the provision of certain kinds of services to clients before, during and after the purchase of particular products or services. It is instrumental that customer service personnel be well equipped and prepared to perform their duties as this goes a long way in ensuring satisfied clients. Primarily, it is upon this service that most clients judge an institution or business establishment by. For you to be fully prepared to partake in this market, training is preceded by some rigorous vetting through interviews. Therefore, it is important that you are well prepared to tackle all kinds of customer service interview questions that may come your way.

Ideally, customer service interview questions range from the personal, motivational to competency based queries. Below, let us highlight some of the top 20 customer service interview questions that may be asked by the selection panel.

Personal Customer Service Interview Questions

Ideally, this portion of the interview takes an almost general form to interviews from other industries. However, caution should be exercised to personalise and align the replies according to the customer service field. These sample questions are:

customer service interview questions

Tell us about Yourself

This may be one of the most basic customer service interview questions but necessary as it determines if you secure the vacancy or not. Ideally, this question gives you, the interviewee, the power to direct the hiring panel to what your most prized ‘possessions’ are. These are a brief education qualification overview and any previous relevant work experiences.

Please describe yourself in one or two sentences

Noteworthy, this customer service interview question should be approached with care by keeping in mind the specific role to which you are applying for.

Kindly tell us your strengths and weaknesses if any

Again, this is one of those customer service interview questions that you will need to answer with a lot of clarity. This question presents the interviewee with the opportunity to market themselves by giving an account of their most valued strengths. Emphasis should be made to ensure that issues are highlighted simply without any hint of excessive exaggerations. On the other hand, it is only fair to highlight a weakness or two but caution should be exercised that the weakness highlighted wouldn’t be your undoing.

What is your greatest Motivation?

Although this may be a little tricky for as one of the customer service interview questions, interviewees should concentrate to highlight on how they strive to better themselves. This assures the potential employer that you are growth-conscious which is a good factor for an organisation.

Where do you see yourself shortly/short term career goals?

This kind of question framed to get your aspirations for the future primarily tests your ambitions and the lengths you are willing to get to.

What is more practical for you, working as a team or alone?

When it comes to customer service, some instances require that you work independently, and others require that you collaborate with fellow workmates. Therefore, these type of customer service interview questions requires that you cleverly highlight your preference for each of the two without showing a clear bias to either.

What kind of salary would you expect from us?

When it comes to this question, it is advisable to refrain from quoting any figure or range but approach the question with a realistic and open-minded expectation.

Why did you leave your last job?

Among the customer service interview questions, this particular one seeks to establish whether your reasons are reasonable enough. Remember not to badmouth your previous employer as the selection panel may be hesitant to hire you as you would most likely badmouth them the same way shortly.

Motivational Customer Service Interview Questions

The employer will naturally wish to know how psyched up you are to work for the company or even at the position you are applying for. These sets of customer service interview questions hence come in handy to help the interviewing panel to make an informed decision. These questions may include;

Please tell us why you would wish to work in this company

Any employer would want to employ a person who has information on what takes place in the company they are willing to work for. Therefore, this question presents an opportunity for the candidate to highlight what they know about the company’s operations.

What interests you in the position you are applying for?

Among the other questions, this question specifically seeks to help the panel understand how well you know the role you are applying for. Furthermore, it requires that you highlight that you know the functions well and as such you may quote your previous experiences from previous job(s) at the same position.

Competency Based Customer Service Interview Questions

These sets of questions are asked by the panel to determine the suitability of the candidate about what the company is looking for. Accordingly, they may range from the ordinary to the bizarre-sounding and even test the individual’s general knowledge and understanding. Importantly to note is that these questions are not simply a yes or no affair. They require some level of detailed explanation and highlighting of examples of scenarios either past experienced or imaginary.

Mostly, these questions begin by ‘How would you…, What would you do if…., Please explain…,’ etc. Some of these questions include;

Please explain how you would deal with an angry and abusive client?

Give  a scenario where you went out of your way to help a customer with some issues they were experiencing.

customer service interview questions

All these customer service interview questions should be approached with a sober mind and answered with as much clarity as possible.
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