Customer Service Resume

About This Resume

Support managers hiring for call center, chat or help desk jobs decide who gets a phone screen from the top third of a resume. Many applicants spend that space on an objective about loving to help people, or on duties every agent on the floor could claim. If you are coming over from a store or a restaurant, the tips below show how to describe counter work in the words support managers use.

Answering an easy question on a quiet morning is often less telling than settling a billing dispute during an outage because anyone sounds patient when nothing is wrong. That is where your numbers come in. Support managers look first for the channels you have worked (phone, chat, email or a counter), the volume you handled and the scores your team tracked, such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) and first-contact resolution. Then they check the software, since an agent who already knows a help desk system like Zendesk or Salesforce can take live customers sooner.

What to Include

• A headline that uses the posting's job title, such as Customer Support Specialist or Call Center Representative
• The channels you have worked (phone, live chat, email, social media or a service counter) and a typical daily volume
• The scores your team tracked, such as CSAT, first-contact resolution (solving the problem on the first call) or quality reviews, with your own results
• Help desk and customer-record software you used every day, such as Zendesk, Salesforce or Freshdesk
• Any authority you held, such as issuing refunds or credits up to a set limit, making retention offers or taking escalated calls
• Languages you can support customers in, with an honest level: native, fluent or conversational
• Typing speed, if the job is chat or email support and the posting asks for it

Customer Service Resume Sample

Tips for Your Customer Service Resume

• Whenever possible, write bullets that tie your patience to results you've had on the phones. Any agent can say they are a people person. To get noticed, you need to show a support manager examples of your calm in action, such as the caller who asked to cancel and stayed.
• If you are moving over from retail or a restaurant, describe the work the way a support team would. Handling returns becomes resolving product problems in person, and comping a meal becomes settling complaints with credits within a set limit.
• When you give a number for one job, give numbers for the others too. That is, if your current job shows a satisfaction score, make sure the earlier job shows something comparable, even if it is only calls or tickets per shift.
• For chat and email jobs, a typo on your resume can undo an otherwise solid application, which is a painful way to lose, since one slow read-through could have caught it. Better yet, after you finish and before you apply, have someone you trust look over the whole page as well.
• Borrow the posting's own words. If it says tickets, members or guests, use those words in your bullets, because screening software and hiring managers both look for them.
• Put escalations and coaching on the page. Experience taking the calls nobody else wanted could lead to a team lead job, and a manager hiring for that role wants to see that you already do part of it.
• Keep it to one page unless you have led a team, so a support manager can see your channels, scores and software at a glance.