Marsha Hebert 
The right customer service skills on your resume can lead to promotions
All companies worldwide have one thing in common – they all have customers. This means all companies need to hire people with great customer service skills.
Some roles will require you to work with internal customers. For example, if you're working in IT, you'll likely have to interact with employees to help them fix computer issues. Those employees are internal customers. Other roles will require you to work with external customers – the people who are buying goods and services from the company.
A well-crafted resume that highlights your relevant skills for a customer service position will help your resume to beat the applicant tracking system, or ATS, which is the first step to getting your application noticed.
When you use these 11 best customer service skills in your resume, you'll stand out from the crowd as someone who can work well with others, anticipate needs, and solve problems.
Use these skills and examples to produce an interview-winning resume.
11 customer service skills and proficiencies for your resume
It's important to note that there's a difference between hard skills and soft skills. Some of these 11 customer service skills that you can use on your resume fall into the hard skill category, and some of them are soft skills.
You can tell them apart by identifying which are job-specific skills that allow you to get things done and which are more interpersonal-type skills that allow you to get along well with others. It's important to have a good balance of both skill types.
Of course, these customer service skills will be in addition to your experience and education, but you can weave the keywords into your these sections. You should also quantify your skills whenever possible, mentioning specific instances and using concrete examples to prove you have experience with each customer service skill on your resume.
Hard skills for a customer service resume
Since every company has customers who require assistance, modern employers are always seeking people with customer service skills. Here are the four most important hard skills hiring managers want to see on your resume:
1. Product knowledge
You can't help customers if you know nothing about the product or service being offered by the company. It's critical that you take the time to learn about what's available and how to answer questions about the company's offerings. You may also need to troubleshoot problems with products and offer recommendations to improve the customer journey.
Here's what that looks like on your resume:
“Increased revenue by 15% by recommending product offering add-ons.”
2. Technical proficiency
Have you ever heard the acronym CRM? It stands for customer relationship management, and most companies use some type of CRM software to track customer interactions and follow up on leads. This is one of the many ways you can demonstrate technical proficiency in customer service skills on your resume.
Here's an example of how to include this customer service skill on your resume:
“Used Salesforce to update and maintain a customer database of 200 leads and mapped the customer journey from initiation to close.”
3. Communication technology
This may seem similar to the technical customer service skills for a resume above; however, it goes a step beyond simply using tools to track customer journeys. This has to do with directly interacting with customers. It could be as simple as using email and multi-line telephones, or more complex, such as using Slack to collaborate with people across the globe.
Here's how to include communication technology customer service skills on your resume:
“Answered as many as 75 incoming client calls per day using a 6-line telephone system.”
4. Data analysis
One of the best ways to support successful customer interactions is through data analysis. You have to know what's going on in the customer's journey to be able to adequately answer their questions, determine customer trends, and improve customer satisfaction.
Here's how to write a data analysis customer service skill bullet point on your resume:
“Analyzed and dissected data from disparate sources to identify trends and solve problems, improving customer satisfaction scores by 12%.”
Soft skills for a customer service resume
Now that you know what hiring managers want to see insomuch as you getting the job done, let's learn what they are looking for regarding interpersonal skills.
5. Active listening
Are you the type of person who knows what you want to say in response to someone speaking before they ever finish a sentence? Or do you take the extra initiative to pay attention to nonverbal cues and follow up with clarifying questions to gain a genuine understanding of what someone is saying? If you fall into the latter category, then you practice active listening. That's definitely a customer service skill for your resume!
Here's how to demonstrate active listening on your resume:
“Improved customer service issue resolution time by 15% by actively listening to and paraphrasing customer concerns to get to the root of the problem.”
6. Emotional intelligence
When you work with customers – whether they are internal or external customers – chances are you're going to come across a situation that requires you to demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence. It's easy, after all, to let our emotions get the best of us, but being that person who can exude compassion in the most challenging situations is something most hiring managers need and want.
Here's an example of how you can prove you have a high EQ on your resume:
“Built a reputation for de-escalating customer situations by leveraging a high EQ, resulting in a 30% reduction in calls being transferred to supervisors.”
7. Problem-solving
You can pair problem-solving skills with data analysis skills to showcase your well-roundedness as a job seeker. It's even better if you're able to add the ability to make autonomous decisions after you solve a problem. Either way, hiring managers value people who take the initiative to fix issues rather than someone who passes problems off to others to figure out.
Here's a fantastic example of a way to show off analysis, problem-solving, and decision-making customer service skills in one bullet:
“Turned around lackluster sales by analyzing 3 months' worth of trends to identify problem areas and recommending improvements to closing processes.”
8. Communication
This is the one that most people get wrong on their resume. It's easy to simply write that you have “good written and verbal communication skills,” but how do you prove it? You write an action-based resume bullet that shows off your ability to communicate clearly and with different types of people.
Here's what that could look like:
“Respected by leaders for being able to clearly articulate complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences, which reduced the number of errors on orders by 30%.”
9. Collaboration
In today's ever-shrinking world, there will likely come a time when you'll need to talk to someone in a different department, a different company, or even in a different country. If you're capable of working cross-functionally to share knowledge and achieve goals, then you can add collaboration as a customer service skill on your resume.
Here's an example of a resume bullet that shows you know how to collaborate:
“Engaged in regular team meetings to share best practices and worked in a team of 12 people to increase overall efficiency by 10%.”
10. Positivity
One of the main ways you can make customers happy is by being optimistic, even when pressure is being applied to a situation. If you're able to create positive customer experiences, then they'll likely be more than happy to continue doing business with you and your company.
Here's an example of a positive attitude bullet you can use on your resume:
“Demonstrated a can-do attitude by taking on additional responsibilities and assisting team members during peak times to reduce customer hold times.”
11. Flexibility
If there's one constant in life, it's that things will change. Sometimes those changes are things you instigate yourself. Other times, change will be thrust upon you. No matter how changes come up, if you're able to remain flexible, go with the flow, and adjust to change without any major problems, you should consider adding your ability to be flexible to your resume.
Here's what that could look like:
“Overcame changing management regimes and adapted to new procedures by adjusting priorities in alignment with new SOPs without sacrificing service delivery to customers.”
Where to put customer service skills on your resume
Most of the customer service skill examples in this article have been related to bullet points. So, you may be assuming that the best place to highlight your customer service skills is in the Professional Experience section of your resume. In fact, you can weave customer service skills into any section of your resume. The key is to find the place where the skill makes the most sense – contextually and grammatically – and add it in.
Profile section
The Profile part of your resume is at the very top of your resume and includes the title or headline and summary paragraph. You can obviously add the phrase “customer service” into the title or headline, but you can also insert some of the example sentences in this article into your profile paragraph. Use them as inspiration for your own sentences, too - the ones in this article are simply meant to help get your brain juices flowing.
Skills section
While your Skills section (or Core Competencies) won't contain actual sentences, you can still put some of your customer service skills here. Instead of writing out bullets, though, you'll simply list up to 15 keywords and phrases that make you a good match for a customer service job.
Professional experience section
Since you are likely using the reverse-chronological format for your resume, you'll want to focus your efforts on writing out the last 10-15 years of experience using action-based bullets, like the ones in the examples in this article. It's also pretty critical that you add numbers every chance you get, so that you show what type of work you've done in the past, as that will give the hiring manager a clue as to what you'll bring to the table for their customers.
Education and credentials section
If you have little to no experience, you can inject some of your customer service skills into the education section of your resume. You'd do this by including courses you took and by talking about any major projects you may have worked on while in school that allowed you to overcome challenges or work collaboratively with others.
Chart your path to success
Adding customer service skills to your resume truly can help you to stand out from the crowd. Almost everyone can say that they know how to handle customers, but the actual proof they can do so is often lacking in resumes. When you use these 11 best customer service skills for your resume, you'll create something that will have hiring managers and recruiters blowing up your email with interview offers.
If you want to make sure that your customer service skills are properly coming through on your resume, let us take a look at it for you. Upload your resume for a free review, where an expert resume writer will go over it and let you know what you need to do.