Support questions, concerns, technical issues, and service inquiries—as a customer service agent, you know how to handle them all! You field customer calls, resolving problems quickly and helping customers navigate your company’s services.
But you might have some questions of your own about writing a resume. What should you include, and how long should it be?
We’ve got this: We’ve helped plenty of people land excellent jobs, and we can help you out, too. Take some inspiration from these three customer service agent resumes and cover letter writing tips that have proven themselves to be effective!
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Experience Sections
Some people assume that customer support is all about people skills, but it’s important to include your technical skills on your list as well. Keep your skills list nice and brief, but highlight all your best abilities!
Do you have an unusual knack for using Salesforce and managing help tickets efficiently? Have you gotten superb ratings on your helpfulness and empathy in the past?
Avoid generic terms like “customer communication” or “support software” since they’re too vague to add value to your resume. Condense soft skills into single, specific terms and list the technology you use by name.
Take a look at these examples:
9 Most Popular Customer Service Agent Skills
- Patience
- Empathy
- Adaptability
- MS Word
- Zendesk
- Jira Service Desk
- MS Excel
- Hootsuite
- Salesforce
Sample Customer Service Agent Work Experience Bullet Points
Skills are essential, but they can only go so far unless you show them in context! Recruiters want to see exactly how those skills benefitted the customers and your previous employers.
Did you boost any impressive ratings or proactively field questions to reduce questions and complaints? If so, make sure you quantify those claims with data like percentages that measure the impact you’ve had.
Your claims will be much more impressive if you can present them with measurements that show how they made a difference in customer-facing and internal contexts.
Here are some ideas to get you started from our best resume examples:
- Documented over 53 payments per day, using MS Excel to document transactions and improve reporting accuracy by 17%
- Updated disabled/special-needs procedures, increasing client satisfaction by 43% and efficiency by 26%
- Collaborated with sales and support teams using Zendesk to secure sales goals and meet client needs with a 97% satisfaction rate
- Presented relevant information to airline customers before boarding, decreasing questions and complaints by 32%
- Supported and consulted clients by utilizing Jira Service Desk to ensure satisfaction, boosting client retention by 23%
How to List Certifications on a Customer Service Agent Resume
Having the right certifications can make advancing your career much easier when you can present up-to-date abilities in the latest software like Zendesk and showcase advanced skills in aspects like managing virtual chat systems or overseeing an entire customer service team.
You’d want to put your certifications section under the education and customer service skills sections of your resume. When listing customer service certifications, you should include:
- The title of the certification, such as CSM or CCSS
- The name of the university or organization you received the certification from, such as the American Management Association
- The date you received the certification
- The certificate’s expiration date (if applicable)
The best certifications to put on a customer service agent resume
The best certificates to include on a customer service agent resume will depend on where you are in your career and the type of job you’re seeking. For example, getting a management certificate could be a great idea if you want to advance to a leadership role. Here are some of the top options to consider:
- Customer Service Representative (CSR) Certificate: Are you looking for one of your first customer service agent jobs? A general CSR certificate is a great option for entry-level applicants who want to develop a good base of skills. It’ll teach you essential abilities in phone etiquette, professional correspondence, and problem resolution.
- Customer Service Manager (CSM) Certificate: When you want to advance into a leadership role, getting a CSM certificate is an ideal choice. It’ll showcase your strategic planning, team building, and employee training capabilities.
- ITIL 4 Foundation Certification: Applicants to positions that require technical customer service support, such as troubleshooting mobile phone problems, can stand out if they have some basic IT training. This certificate teaches skills in help desk support, digital service delivery, and making industry terminology easy to understand for the average person.
Some other great certifications for customer service agents are:
Top 5 Tips for Your Customer Service Agent Resume
- Stick to the point
- Just as you handle each customer’s question or issue efficiently, you want to keep your resume streamlined and concise. It’s tempting to get into the backstory behind your experience bullet points, but save the best of those for your customer service cover letter.
- Did you add those metrics yet?
- We sure hope so! They really are important: Recruiters will see you as far more credible, desirable, and proactive if you supply them with hard data from square one. Demonstrate your efficiency by reporting the numbers that measure your positive impact.
- Show your development
- When you provide examples of your achievements throughout your work history, it’s wise to show advancement with each job role. Your numbers should rise while your experiences get more complex, so arrange your resume accordingly.
- Pick the ideal resume template
- As a customer service agent, your job is all about creating a positive customer experience, so make sure your resume is just as user-focused. Use a clean resume layout, simple colors, and a highly readable font.
- Show Adaptability and versatility
- Customer service is all about thinking on your feet: What information do you need, and how can you solve problems the fastest? Try to include a broad variety of examples in your history.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What about a career summary?
- Honestly, you should probably leave the resume summary out in most cases. Unless you have tons of fresh value to pack into a brief paragraph, your single page of resume space can be used differently and much more effectively.
- How do I keep my metrics fresh?
- I understand: When so much of your job centers around the same goal of boosting customer satisfaction and retention, you may worry about your metrics getting somewhat repetitive. Look for other numbers, like company savings or specific rating increases, to brighten your achievements with more variety.
- Do I really have to customize for each job?
- Yep! But it isn’t as daunting as some people think: Just refer back to the job description and look for keywords and unique phrasing that you can switch out and reflect in each resume. Oh, and try to match your writing tone to theirs.
