3 Professional Customer Service Resume Examples and Templates

Overview

For individuals who have strong communication, problem solving and time management skills, and the ability to connect with and understand others, may be well suited for a job in customer service. The job outlook for customer service representatives is fairly positive according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. With an expected growth rate of 5% over the next decade, this sector is likely to offer decent job opportunities. The first step in obtaining a job as a customer service representative is to create a resume that is tailored to the industry.

What is Customer Service?

Customer service jobs can describe anything from retail to the food and beverage industry to technology – essentially, any role in which you directly interact with your users, customers, or clients has an element of customer service. Some customer service professionals work in direct customer service jobs, while others use their customer service skills to work in different roles.

Professional Customer Service Resume Example

When writing a professional customer service resume, your skills are the star of the show. Demonstrate through your skills section and work experience that you’ve developed all the best traits of a customer service professional. For example, your previous jobs may have used customer surveys to gauge satisfaction – did you always score highly? Now is the time to brag about things like that.

Senior Customer Support Resume

Generally, senior customer support professionals are also responsible for managing teams of customer support workers. For senior customer support resumes, you should highlight your managerial and leadership skills. Even if you’ve never led a team before, try to find a combination of leadership skills and customer service experience that will demonstrate to hiring managers that you have what it takes to take on a senior role.

Customer Service Rep Resume Example

Generally, customer service reps work specifically for one brand or company in order to sell a product or service and take care of clients. While writing a customer service rep resume, take the time to research the company to which you’re applying. What are their values? What does their product do for their clients, and how could you help continue that?

Selecting the Right Customer Service Resume Format

Writing your customer service resume in a reverse-chronological format is ideal when looking to show off your skills, experience and accomplishments.

Be sure to use big headings, clear and neat typeface and plenty of white space when constructing your resume. Export your customer service resume in PDF rather than Microsoft word - the result will be a professional and intact product to deliver to recruiters.

Is a Functional Resume for Customer Service a Good Choice?

A functional resume, also known as a skills-based resume, focuses on your skills rather than your work history. Instead of the traditional reverse-chronological resume, when creating a functional resume you choose the most relevant skills and responsibilities from your previous jobs and combine them to demonstrate your potential as an employee.

In theory, a functional resume should work well for customer service resumes, because it allows you to demonstrate those all-important customer service skills. However, functional resumes have a bad reputation amongst hiring managers, and most of the time your chances will suffer when you use a functional resume. Unless the job posting specifically requests a functional resume, it’s best to stick with more traditional formats.

The Best Customer Service Resume Templates

Using a template to create your customer service resume means you won't have to worry about formatting the structure of your resume. You’ll be able to focus entirely on what you bring to the position, and hiring managers won’t be put off by any unusual formatting.

Companies often use ATS to track and filter their applicants. While this is a great benefit to employers, prospective employees are often frustrated that their customer service resumes aren’t even being looked at by hiring managers. Thankfully, VisualCV’s professionally designed resume templates have been specifically optimized for ATS software.

What to Include in a Customer Service Resume

Research suggests that potential recruiters look at a resume for an average of 6 seconds. With so many variations in a professional customer service resume, it can be tricky to know what the differences are.

In general, your customer service resume should contain the following:

• A summary
• Your experience
• Your Education
• Your skills, including any professional certifications

How to Write a Customer Service resume

Once you understand each element that should be included in your customer service resume, you can begin to write. In general, keeping your entries short and snappy is appealing to hiring managers – they have to scour so many applications that they’ll only spend a brief period of time looking at yours. Make sure hiring managers have as easy a time as possible understanding what you’ll bring to the position. Using short sentences and bulleted lists are usually a great way to get more information across using fewer words.

The Perfect Customer Service Resume Heading

A resume heading gives hiring managers a brief overview of your experience, skills, and background. It’s often the first thing a hiring manager will read, so using it as a way to begin selling yourself and your skills can be incredibly helpful for you.

Customer Service Resume Heading Example

Customer service professional with 10 years of experience providing clients with exceptional experiences.

What is a Good Summary for a Customer Service Resume

If you have previous customer service experience to share on your resume, including a resume summary is a great way for hiring managers to gain a quick understanding of who you are and what you could bring to the position. A summary section focuses on providing recruiters and hiring managers with a snapshot of your experience and skills. This is your chance to explain how all the pieces of your resume fit together. It’s a place to brag and highlight achievements that are especially relevant to the job posting.

Professional Customer Service Resume Summary Sample

*Dedicated Customer Service Representative backed with more than 5 years of experience in customer relations. Motivated to maintain customer satisfaction and to contribute to the success of the organization. Proven ability to establish rapport with clients and exceed targets on the production floor. *

A Good Senior Customer Service Resume Summary

Flexible and extremely adaptable customer service professional experienced in various indoor and outdoor-based environments.

Related: Our guide on how to write a resume summary.

How to Describe Customer Service on Resume

How to Describe Customer Service on Resume Customer service skills are highly valued across many different industries. If your job in any way involves you speaking to or collaborating with clients, you’ll need excellent customer service skills. A way to demonstrate your customer service experience when you aren’t necessarily applying for a direct customer service role is to focus on the skills you developed through your time in customer service. For example, you almost certainly gained skills in time management, communication, teamwork, and client management.

Professional Work Experience for Customer Service Resume

This is where you can really start bragging. Alison Green, author of Ask a Manager, highlights the single biggest resume mistake she saw in her time as a hiring manager: “Writing a resume that reads like a series of job descriptions.”

“The bullet points they use to describe what they did for each job just list activities and read like a job description for the role might,” she says. “For example, ‘edit documents,’ ‘collect data,’ or ‘manage website.’”

Have you got experience helping clients one-on-one? Have your previous managers told you there was no problem you couldn’t solve when it comes to customer service? Now is the time to make this known to recruiters.

CSR Resume Sample - Work Experience

Customer Service Advisor, Macmillan Publishers India | 2006-2008

• Liaised with customers, including multi-lingual telephone and written correspondence, handling queries and claims whilst taking responsibility for investigations.

-Implemented a direct-mail follow-up program for new customers; data reflects a 55% increase in repeat customers.

• Translated marketing material into Spanish, gaining dominant presence in markets left virtually ignored by competitors.
• Improved customer satisfaction ranking from #10 to #3 amongst twelve branches.

This work experience example does an excellent job of showcasing the applicant’s skills. While you’d likely state in your skills section that you speak multiple languages, demonstrating their use in the workplace will be extremely appealing to hiring managers. This example also uses specific numbers to back up the applicant’s claims – they improved customer satisfaction and repeat business and have data to prove it.

Customer Service Work Experience on Resume - 3-5 Years of Experience

Customer Service Advisor, Inventa Cleantec | 2016 - Present

• Successfully handled corporate renewal projects for three consecutive years, completed ahead of deadlines each time.
• Created/updated/maintained the customer database (Academic & Government, Corporate and Health Science customers) using Oracle.
• Trained and mentored new recruits and held each responsible for their work.

When writing work experience to demonstrate a long stretch of time at a particular position, you should be able to show hiring managers how you grew during your time there. This example works because the applicant is showing their long history of getting work done well and ahead of schedule, and also demonstrating the skills they’ve learned during their tenure, such as Oracle and management skills.

Senior Customer Support Work Experience Resume Sample

Customer Service Administrator, Sony | 2017-Present

• Managed and interpreted customer requirements
• Attracted potential customers by answering product and service questions, suggesting information about other products and services
• Opened customer accounts by recording account information
• Resolved product or service problems by clarifying the customer’s complaint, determining the cause of the problem, selecting and explaining the best solution.
• Recommended potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.
• Prepared product or service reports by collecting and analyzing customer information.

Top 15 Skills for a Customer Service Resume in 2022

1. Active listening
2. Building customer relationships and loyalty
3. Time management
4. Positive attitude
5. Adaptability
6. Attentiveness
7. Conflict resolution
8. Dependability
9. Decision-marking skills
10. Communication
11. Problem-solving skills
12. Language skills (bilingual, multilingual, etc.)
13. Empathy
14. Flexibility
15. Leadership skills

Final Thoughts

For some people, customer service positions are the first jobs they work, and they use the skills learned there to transition to other roles throughout their career. Other customer service savants find a real passion and expertise in this field, and manage to work their way up to leading teams of people in incredibly fast-paced enviornments. Whichever you are, your VisualCV customer service resume is sure to help you stand out from the crowd as you find your next role!