Customer Service Representatives
Customer service representatives are the first point of contact for all businesses and they are expected to communicate articulately with customers to resolve issues. They are typically trained on the job because their duties will vary depending on many different factors. By the year 2029, the customer service employment sector is expected to decline by 2%, losing 59,000 jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This does not mean it is not a lucrative career path. Customer service reps earn a median hourly wage of $17.23 ($35,830 annually) as of May 2020 and that is expected to rise as time goes on.
Interacting with customers to handle and resolve complaints is not always an easy job and requires extreme attention to detail, patience, and a professional attitude. A customer service representative should be knowledgeable of company products and services, be able to collaborate with other departments to resolve issues, and route customers to the appropriate department if the issue cannot be resolved on the front end.
Let's take a look at the resume sample below. Michelle is a customer service professional in the travel industry. Her duties include responding to customer inquiries, resolving any/all problems that may arise, building rapport with customers, and providing navigational assistance to travelers using online travel booking tools such as Travelport, ResX, Deloitte Travel Online, Concur, and Deem. If you are a customer service rep looking for a new position, your resume needs to demonstrate your willingness to go above and beyond to help customers and be able to utilize certain CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools required in the modern business world.
Conclusion of this Customer Service Resume
Michelle was trying to be very specific in targeting a customer service job within the travel industry. This requires certain keywords and very specific travel booking tools to be highlighted within the document. Since all of her previous jobs carried the same/similar responsibilities as one another, we took the functional approach and summarized her duties under the Core Competencies section. This makes the resume easier for the hiring manager to know what Michelle has done throughout her career without having to read through a plethora of repetitive bullet points. Check out the points that really made Michelle's resume shine and helped to land her next job.
- It's succinct and straight to the point. This resume provides a concise insight into Michelle's background in the Summary of Qualifications without over-explaining herself. It focuses on travel industry specific keywords and phrases which are native to customer service. This is good for ATS algorithms when your resume is scanned for certain job qualifications.
- It avoids redundant job responsibilities. We've all seen resumes that contain repetitive job duties, one after another. A mistake many people make is trying to rewrite the same responsibilities in a different way, only to say the same thing in different words. This makes a resume very boring to read and can put the reviewer to sleep, landing your resume in the trash pile along with all of the other applicants who didn't put much effort into their job search.
- It includes industry-specific software tools. This is a big one. If possible, it's always a good idea to include software applications or platforms (CRM systems) which are used to manage customer relationships - especially if you are targeting a specific industry.
As a customer service representative, you are competing with many others for the same jobs. There are approximately more than 3 million customer service reps in the workforce at any given time, and it is imperative that you have a resume that makes you stand out above the rest.