How to detail customer service skills in CV (With example)

Customer service skills are an asset in any role or industry, but can be especially important for customer-facing roles. A well-written CV that clearly demonstrates relevant skills can communicate your professional abilities and is likely to impress hiring managers. Learning how to write about your most relevant customer service skills on your CV can help you advance your career. In this article, we discuss how to write a customer service skills CV, list essential customer service skills to include and provide a helpful example.

How to write a customer service skills CV

Writing an effective customer service skills CV can help you secure exciting roles in nearly any industry. Regardless of your existing job title, featuring your customer service skills correctly can help you create a competitive CV. These steps can help you describe your customer service skills effectively:

1. Select the correct CV style

A reverse-chronological CV style is an excellent format for showing your essential skills and work experience. You can include several sections that each explain how you performed certain tasks with your customer service skills. For instance, you can briefly include your skills in both the professional statement and the experience section. You can then highlight additional soft and hard skills in a dedicated section at the bottom of the page.

Related: Functional CV: tips on how to write a functional CV

2. Discuss skills in the professional statement

Most reverse-chronological CVs begin with a header that includes your name and contact information, followed by the professional statement section. This is where you briefly explain your expertise, ambition and your passion for the role. Here you can also mention how you used your customer service expertise to solve unique problems throughout your career. This section is about your professional personality and is a great opportunity to highlight some of your most notable customer service skills.

3. Highlight relevant tasks in the experience section

Another section you can use to discuss your customer service skills is the experience section. This can directly explain your skills and specify your responsibilities that require customer service skills for a successful outcome. You can mention the unique skills that helped you secure your achievements.

Mention your most outstanding tasks and accomplishments in three to five bullet points. Accomplishing some tasks requires specific skills, so providing examples of those can help demonstrate your proficiency. For example, you may have helped customers with your excellent patience and communication skills in a difficult situation. Whether you're drafting a student CV or advancing to a new stage in your career, you can include any paid or unpaid experience, such as internships or volunteer work.

4. Summarise your education

Your education section explains the qualifications you gained that helped you acquire specific skills. For example, if you have a marketing degree, it may demonstrate that you have a better understanding of promotional strategies and effective communication. It's best if the section clarifies the qualification, school, location and dates you attended.

5. Feature customer service skills

This section is where you can include all your skills in one place in a comprehensive bulleted list. Highlight your customer service skills in bullet points, starting with your most relevant technical skills. This makes it easier for recruiters to review quickly and understand your strengths and which skills you can apply to the new role. Refer to the job description to make sure you use similar keywords.

Related: Customer service skills: examples, definition and how to demonstrate

Customer service skills to highlight in a CV

Employees with excellent customer service can make a significant difference to a company's public perception. These abilities can help maintain customers' brand loyalty and increase the company's profit. Here are some essential customer service skills recruiters may value in your CV:

1. Empathy

Excellent customer service skills include empathising with the clients. Understanding things through the consumer's perspective allows a professional to know their concerns more effectively. Employers prefer employees that communicate in honest, compassionate and concerned ways. You can discuss experiences and responsibilities that needed empathy for a successful outcome.

2. Communication

Communicating simply and pleasantly makes it easy to build a good rapport with customers. Excellent communication skills encourage efficiency, which is crucial to both the company and its customers. You can include your communicative abilities in the skills section and also highlight them in the experience section.

Communication skills are important for most jobs. They're even more crucial for jobs that deal with customers and stakeholders. Highlight your written, verbal, nonverbal and active listening skills that have helped you deliver excellent customer service in previous roles. The way you create your CV can also demonstrate your communication skills.

3. Time management

Any customer-facing role requires a prompt response to all customer enquiries. As technology has such a significant influence on sales and marketing, online customers expect a quick response. Recruiters expect candidates with excellent time management skills for such roles. Highlight how you managed time during certain situations to perform multiple tasks. Mentioning some of your past responsibilities in the experience section can highlight your time management skills.

Related: Time-management skills: definition, examples and tips for improvement

4. Patience

Patience is a crucial customer service skill that helps any professional deal with difficult situations. As customer-facing roles focus on the customer's best interests, hiring managers value CVs that explain the candidate's patience. Patience is essential when solving problems, multitasking, communicating, and answering customer questions. Such situations differentiate employees with good customer service skills, as they take time and patiently help consumers who may have lots of questions or need additional assistance.

5. Positive attitude

Your positive attitude is not just beneficial for the employer, but also for your personal development. You can highlight your attitude in the CV by mentioning you are open to new challenges and enjoy working with people and different teams. People who have a positive attitude are more likely to encourage similar behaviour in others. This can apply to both coworkers and customers.

6. Confidence

Confidence is essential for providing excellent service and can help build trust with customers. The tone and voice of your writing and how you explain your achievements on your CV can demonstrate your confidence. Make sure you have presented yourself confidently and support your reasons with facts wherever possible. Your experience section can highlight your confidence if you list your achievements. Your professional statement is also another section that helps recruitment managers understand how confident you are.

Customer service skills CV example

Below is an example of a CV for a customer service representative that features their relevant skills:

George Stomedus
Manchester
george_stomedus@email.com
79123 123456

Professional statement

Attentive and empathetic customer service representative with 5+ years of experience in challenging call centre roles. I have been keen to support companies by using effective complaints management to develop long-term customer relationships. I have maintained a customer retention rate above the industry average throughout my career by using my excellent customer service skills.

Work experience

Customer service representative
Lyndon Services, Manchester
April 2019–Present

• answer email enquiries daily

• research customer needs to identify referrals and sales opportunities

• implement changes to online contact forms and other minor documents as per customer feedback

• assist customers in finding the right product according to their preferences

• report daily activities and suggest changes

Notable achievements:

• contributed to a 13% increase in average product use

• achieved an overall 27% retention rate on customers after cancellation requests

• trained and mentored dozens of new starters in company procedure and helped them achieve above-average KPIs

Customer service associate
Sterling Financial Services, London
October 2016–March 2019

• answered incoming calls and met targets for call length and call waiting times

• communicated with customers and assisted them professionally

• investigated customer's problems from their perspective and delivered effective solutions

Notable achievements:

• received compliments from 29 individual customers through website reviews and emails

• worked on a team responsible for receiving an average feedback rating of 98% on random customer satisfaction surveys

Education

BA (Hons) Media and communications
The University of Arts, London
September 2012–June 2016

Skills and abilities

• excellent verbal and written communication skills

• outstanding complaint resolution knowledge

• familiar with customer loyalty

• incredible persuasion, negotiation and up-selling skills

• comprehensive product knowledge

• outstanding time management skills

• excellent knowledge of service desk and phone system software

The model shown is for illustration purposes only, and may require additional formatting to meet accepted standards.