Customer service CV example

Contact centre and front-line hiring tends to move fast. A resourcing team or agency may be filling a whole intake of advisers at once, and your CV gets a quick look before a phone screen. In that time the reader wants three facts: have you done this kind of work, on this kind of channel, in a setting like theirs? Put those facts in the first two lines of your profile and in the job titles themselves.

Say the channel, the product and the volume

"Customer service" covers a very wide range of jobs. Handling billing calls for an energy supplier is not the same as serving at a hotel reception or answering chats for an online retailer. Write your job titles and first bullets so the reader can place you:

• Channel: inbound calls, outbound calls, live chat, email, social media, face to face, or a blend.
• Product or sector: energy, broadband, banking, insurance, retail, travel, the public sector.
• Type of contact: sales, billing, technical support, complaints, retention, collections.
• Volume, if you know it: calls or chats in a typical day, or how many chats you run at once.

Metrics: use your own, and explain them

Contact centres measure advisers closely, which gives you ready-made evidence. The useful ones on a CV are quality scores from call listening, first contact resolution, customer satisfaction or net promoter scores, retention saves, and complaints closed within the target time. Average handling time matters to employers too, but on its own it can look as if you rush customers, so pair it with a quality measure.

Only use figures that were yours and that you could explain in an interview. Say what they compared against if you can: "Quality score averaged 94% across the year against a team target of 85%" means more than "94% quality". If you do not have the numbers to hand, a factual line such as "top three in the team for retention saves for six months running" still works. Leave out figures about the company as a whole.

Complaints, retention and customers who need extra help

Anyone who has worked on a complaints or retention line has skills that employers find hard to hire. Describe a type of case rather than a single story: "Handle escalated billing complaints, from first call to final response letter" or "Speak to customers who want to leave, and find a tariff or payment plan that works for them". Regulated sectors such as energy, banking and telecoms also care a great deal about how you treat customers in vulnerable circumstances. If you have been trained to spot and support those customers, add a line on it.

From the shop floor to the contact centre

Retail and hospitality workers move into contact centres all the time, and the skills carry over well. The trick is to translate them. A phone shop sales job becomes "advised customers on contracts and upgrades, and handled returns and complaints at the counter". A bar job becomes "served customers at busy times, dealt with complaints, and cashed up at close". Mention any till, booking or CRM systems you used, and any targets you were set, so a contact centre recruiter can see you already work to measures.

Going the other way, from phones to face to face, bring forward the in-person parts of any job and your comfort with busy, noisy settings.

Going for team leader

A team leader CV needs evidence that you already help other people do the job. Coaching new starters, running huddles when the team leader is off, listening to calls for quality checks, handling floor-walking or escalations, covering the queue board: each of these is team leader work. Say how often you do it and what came of it, for example a new starter who passed their probation after you buddied them. If you have sat in on one-to-ones or return-to-work meetings, mention it. A team leader apprenticeship or an internal leadership course is worth listing too.

Shifts, assessment days and quick replies

Many contact centres open early, close late and work weekends, so say plainly which shifts you can cover. If you can only do certain days, say that too; it saves a wasted interview for both sides. Expect the process to include a short phone call and sometimes an assessment day with a role-play call or a typing test for chat roles. Your CV is what the interviewer has in front of them during both, so make sure every figure on it is one you could talk through. Reply quickly when a recruiter calls. In volume hiring, an intake can fill before the advert closes.

What to cut

A skills section that reads "excellent communication, teamwork, problem solving, customer focus" adds nothing. Replace it with things a recruiter can check: the CRM and telephony systems you use, typing speed if you are applying for chat or email work, languages, and any regulated-sector training. Keep the CV to one page, or two if you have several relevant jobs, in a simple single-column layout. Volume recruiters often use applicant tracking systems, and you can see how yours reads with the free ATS CV checker.

On pay, the National Careers Service gives an average of £20,000 a year for a starter customer service assistant and £30,000 for an experienced one. Team leader roles pay more.