How to indentify excellent customer service staff during interviews

When you’re in the midst of recruiting for roles with a customer service component, it can be quite ‘easy’ to confirm if the candidate/s have the required hard (technical) skills, but it’s much more challenging to confirm if the candidate/s have excellent people skills.

A robust recruitment process should include a blend of assessment and selection processes and depending on the type of industry and the role you are recruiting for, some or all of the below can be very helpful to include:

• Resume

• Cover Letter

• Key Selection Criteria

• 1:1 Interviews - Telephone and/or Individual Face to Face

• Panel Interview - 2 or more staff and can include stakeholders

• Interaction Observations via activity sessions with a group of candidates

• Behavioural Profiling Assessments

• Referees

• Social Media reviews - LinkedIn

• Legal Checks ie: Police, Working With Children

Your business may even prefer to outsource the recruitment process which can make it not only more efficient, particularly when hiring multiple people but also offers the peace of mind that you are using the most current and legally responsible hiring practices.

If you’re doing the hiring in-house for customer service roles, we highly recommend using behavioural style questions to help identify the soft skills of candidates. These questions are designed to help you learn more about the experiences of the interviewee but they also allow you (interviewer/s) to observe the verbal and non-verbal communication skills of candidate/s.

Here are 5 behavioural style questions to include in your interview processes:

1. What do you find challenging when interacting with customers face to face? (and/or over the phone if that is more relevant to the role)

2. What would you do if you witnessed a customer speaking rudely to another staff member?

3. How often do you think you should refresh your customer service skills?

4. What type of customer service refresher training do you prefer?

5. What part of providing customer service do you enjoy the most?

Want to know what to look out for when the interviewee responds to these questions?

Book a FREE Customer Service Analysis today and we’ll share not only the things to watch and listen for when, but also provide you with insights into the 3 key areas businesses must address if they want to recruit and retain a team of Customer Service Professionals.

By Cate Schreck - Director of Lightbulb Training Solutions  and Author of “The A-Z of Service Excellence”