Marketing and Online Customer Support

To excel at providing thorough and enthusiastic customer service, customer service representatives must possess a talent for nurturing strong customer relationships. This question helps you determine whether a candidate enjoys talking to people and if they have the power to boost customer loyalty and engagement.

What to look for in an answer:

☛ Passion for helping people

☛ Energetic personality

☛ Customer-focused

I’m definitely a people person! I love talking to people from different backgrounds, finding out about their lives and helping them find solutions to their problems. I was voted Most Outgoing at my last job and small talk is one of my talents.

Appeasing an irate customer is no easy task, but delighting them can be even more challenging. Ask this question to determine if a candidate is willing to go the extra mile for a customer, even in a tense situation.

What to look for in an answer:

☛ Conflict resolution skills

☛ Stress tolerance and resilience

☛ Ability to abide by company policies

During my previous role, a customer was furious about not being able to return an item for a full refund. Company policy only allowed me to offer the customer store credit since he didn’t have a receipt. After letting him vent, listening intently to his concerns and apologizing for the inconvenience, I helped him find a gift for his wife for the same price so he wasn’t out any money. He thanked me for my patience and told me he would tell his friends about his experience.

☛ 1. What does good customer service mean to you?

☛ 2. What appeals to you about this role specifically?

☛ 3. What’s the best customer service you’ve ever received? Why?

☛ 4. Can you tell me about a time you received poor customer service?

☛ 5. Is there a difference between customer service and customer support?

☛ 6. Can you tell me about a time when you were proud of the level of service you gave a customer?

☛ 7. Have you ever dealt with an unreasonable customer? How did you handle it, and how would you handle it today?

☛ 8. Have you ever bent the rules in assisting a customer? Tell me the situation and the outcome.

☛ 9. In your past work, have you ever received negative feedback from a customer? What did you do with that feedback?

☛ 10. Can you tell me about a customer that you found difficult to understand, and how you approached that interaction?

☛ 11. Can you describe a time when you had to say “no” to an important customer’s request?

☛ 12. What’s the best way to help a customer who has worked with multiple agents and hasn’t received the help they need?

☛ 13. Have you had a time when a customer was reporting a technical issue that you didn't know the answer to? What was your approach, and how did it end up?

☛ 14. Can you tell me about a situation with a customer when there wasn’t a clear policy to use, and you needed to make a judgement call? How did you approach your decision, and what happened?

☛ 15. Can you give me an example of a situation where there were major problems with your product/service, and you needed to respond without having all the answers yet?

☛ 16. Can you give an example of how you handled alerting a customer when your product/service caused a major problem?

☛ 17. When responding to a customer, how do you decide what information to include, and what to leave out?

☛ 18. Can you tell me about a time when you needed to convince a customer or a teammate to change the way they were working (e.g., adopt a new procedure or modify their language), and how you went about that?

☛ 19. What’s the last new skill you learned? Why did you choose that skill, and how did you learn it?

☛ 20. Can you tell me about a time when you made a great contribution to your team?

☛ 21. What’s the next book I should read? Why?

☛ 22. What are you better at today than you were this time last year?

☛ 23. What do you think makes a good teammate?

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: Content marketing is about adding value to your readers, such as providing an infographic that educates about their industry, or creating an entertaining video that helps them with their job or career. Your team needs to create content that provides entertainment such as through story-telling or comedy in order to stand out from the crowd, and to capture and sustain their attention.

☛ What to look out for: Look for examples of their content that told a story, used humor, and/or educated their audience about something other than a company’s products. Bonus points if the candidate has delivered more unique formats of content, such as infographics, podcasts or interactive content. Ask for examples of where they’ve used visual content, including why they were or weren’t successful.

Providing exceptional customer service is a team effort that requires constant collaboration to build a strong, positive image of the company. This question will let you know if a candidate is willing to jump in and help their colleagues, and if they have the ability to relay customer feedback effectively to other departments.

What to look for in an answer:

☛ Teamwork abilities

☛ Communication skills

☛ Desire to improve the company

Teamwork is essential for success as a customer service rep. At my last job, I worked closely with a cohesive team. We regularly pooled our knowledge and resources to address tricky customer complaints and handle a large amount of incoming calls during peak times. I also collaborated cross-functionally by collecting customer feedback and communicating it to the product team.