09 Dec
‘What does customer service mean to you?’
Why are recruiters asking this?
Recruiters want to understand your passion and motivation for the role you are applying for, how you solve problems, and a situation where you positively represented your company.
This question allows you to describe your interests, your story, and how you relate to people and understand their needs.
This is also a great opportunity to highlight your self-awareness. By showing that you understood the situation and were able to perform above the expected level demonstrates both your skill level and mental clarity.
Checklist for a great answer
- Demonstrate problem-solving skills
- Tell a story with details and tailor it to the role you’re interviewing for
- Show experience with stakeholder management
Examples
In my previous company, there were protocols that prevented one customer support representative from referring customers to another representative of the same seniority. This meant that if I couldn’t solve an issue I would have to transfer the customer to another department or to my superior, and customers hate nothing more than being passed around and explaining their problem to multiple people. To avoid transferring calls I would take some simple, but thorough steps to solve their issue. First, I would collect as much information from the customer as possible. Problems are most effectively solved using as much of the available information as possible. Second, I would follow the normal protocol for what I believed to be the issue. If this didn’t seem to work, I would retrace my steps and ensure that I was communicating effectively with the customer in order to completely understand their problem. If I ran into a situation where I didn’t think I could help them, I would keep them on the line while I went and asked someone for the information that I needed. This prevented my managers from getting trivial calls as well as created a personal connection with the customers. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t feel like just another support call, but a valued member of our clientbase.
Other similar questions
- Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond the requirements for a project.
- What does customer service mean to you?
- Tell me about a time when you had to stretch yourself to get to an extraordinary result
How do I get better at these questions?
PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!
The illustrious economist and statistician EF Schumacher once said: “An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.” We at Mockmate strongly believe in exactly this, which is why we created our AI-powered job interview simulator. Now is the time to stop reading blog posts and watching YouTube videos, and begin to perfect your interview skills by actually doing it! Get started here!
