resume customer service skills

20+ Key Customer Service Skills to List on Your Resume in 2024 (With Examples)

To land a job in customer service, you need to showcase your best skills to employers. Customer service involves both technical and interpersonal skills. This makes a diverse skillset all the more important! In this guide, we will uncover the best customer service skills to include on a resume. Plus, we will provide you with tips and tricks for formatting.

What is Customer Service?

Customer service is a vast industry spanning many different forms of business.

From answering customer calls to building customer relationships, there are many responsibilities involved.

Aside from the general Customer Service Representative, other common examples of jobs within customer service include:

• Call Center Representatives
• Administrative Assistants
• Restaurant Workers
• Salespeople

Essentially, any job that deals with working directly with customers falls under the customer service umbrella.

Why Should I Include Customer Service Skills on My Resume?           

When applying for a job in customer service, showing your ability to work well with people is key.

Including skills on a resume allows you to showcase your best strengths to employers.

By adding specifically customer service skills, you can demonstrate your most relevant abilities according to the job you are applying to.

You never want to include skills just for the sake of it.

It is imperative to always tailor your skills to match the requirements listed in the job description.

Moreover, you should always be honest in what skills you include.

Never list a skill you don’t actually have!

Need help brainstorming skills? We have a free guide with 100+ Key Skills for a Resume in 2024 (with Examples for Any Job) to help you out.

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What Are the Best Customer Service Skills I Should Add to My Resume?

Before you can determine the best customer service skills to include on your resume, you need to understand the two main types of skills:

• ‍ Interpersonal (Soft) Skills: These skills are based on emotion and human interaction. Much of customer service relies upon interpersonal skills such as communication and problem-solving. ‍
• Technical (Hard) Skills: Hards skills have to do with your technical abilities, such as writing or working with software.

When writing out your skills on a resume, it is important to include both soft and hard skills.

For customer service, you should always take the time to plan out the skills you want to include.

By making a large list you can then narrow it down to the most relevant and best ones.

10 Soft Skills for Customer Service

Here are our top 10 soft skills for customer service to consider adding to your resume:

• ‍ Conflict Management: Being a customer service representative means dealing with conflict. The ability to calmly and effectively manage customer conflicts is essential.
• ‍ Communication: Communication skills are arguably the most important soft skill for customer service. You need to be able to communicate clearly and easily with all types of customers. ‍
• Empathy: Customers want to feel like you relate to them. A strong sense of empathy comes in handy when working in the customer service realm.
• ‍ Compassion: You never know what’s going on in a customer’s head or life. Treating each situation with compassion towards the customer is highly necessary.
• ‍ Problem Solving: During customer conflicts, being able to think of a solution quickly is key.
• ‍ Patience: Miscommunications can occur when interactions are rushed or not given proper attention. Having patience is crucial when working in customer service.
• ‍ Attention to Detail: Many technicalities can affect customer service. The ability to pay close attention to a customer’s issues and the solutions given is a core component of good customer service.
• ‍ Intuitive: Making customers feel as though all their problems have been solved is very beneficial. Acting intuitively and proactively to address potential customer issues makes for great customer service.
• ‍ Goal-Oriented: When working with customers, it is essential to set clear goals and boundaries. This helps to ensure everyone understands the expectations and standard of work being provided.
• ‍ Persuasion: In sales positions especially, having the ability to persuade a customer’s emotions and viewpoints is highly necessary. You should be able to position yourself as the guide that can offer the best solutions to them.

10 Hard Skills for Customer Service

Here is a list of 10 hard skills for customer service to use on a resume:

• ‍ Microsoft Office & Google Suite: Microsoft and Google programs are widely used across all industries. Familiarizing yourself with these programs will give you a competitive edge, as employers won’t need to train you on how to use them.
• ‍ Writing: Writing skills are majorly important in any job related to communication. In customer service, this often translates to writing emails and official company copy.
• ‍ Bi/Multi-Lingual: Speaking multiple languages is always a plus in customer service. If you can fluently speak and translate more than one language, be sure to include this on your resume.
• ‍ Data Entry: Customer service can sometimes involve a huge amount of data. Understanding the basics of data entry is foundational for a successful customer service professional.
• ‍ Performance: Customer service professionals take on a persona used to persuade, empathize, and relate to customers. Having a good ability for performance and acting can be highly useful in this field as a result.
• ‍ Situational Analysis: Every customer and situation is different. An important hard skill for customer service reps to have is the ability to thoroughly analyze each situation. This can involve note-taking, research, gathering feedback, and many more essential tasks.
• ‍ Telecommunication: In an increasingly digital world, good telecommunication has become crucial for customer service. This can refer to any interaction happening digitally, including phone calls and online services.
• ‍ Bookkeeping: A fundamental component of customer service is keeping thorough records. Transactions, contracts, and more can all fall under the umbrella of bookkeeping. Honing these skills is good for any professionals seeking employment in customer service.
• ‍ Closing Ability: A customer service professional must develop a specific skill known as their “closing ability.” This is their ability to finalize a deal or transaction with a customer. It combines many soft skills, such as negotiation and persuasion, to create a more technical skill.
• ‍ Product Memorization: The ability to memorize large quantities of information is highly important in customer service.

No matter whether they are hard or soft skills, all your skills should be selected according to the job.

In fact, tailoring your resume for the job is crucial for impressing employers!

Read our career advice article on how to Tailor Your Resume to Any Job in 4 Easy Steps to learn more.  

How Do I Describe My Customer Service Skill Levels?

When describing your customer service skills on a resume, it is important to indicate your level of proficiency.

Generally, there are three levels commonly used on resumes:

• ‍ Expert: At an expert level, you can employ a skill according to your own assessment of a situation. Little to no outside direction is required. ‍
• Intermediate: Intermediate skill levels indicate that you are proficient but may still need some supervision. ‍
• Novice: A novice skill level lets employers know you understand the basics but do not consider the skill one of the best proficiencies.

We recommend only including your very best skills on a resume.

As such, you should aim to mainly include skills that fall into either the expert or intermediate categories.

How Do I List My Customer Service Skills on a Resume?

To include customer service skills on a resume, there are two main formatting options:

• Listing the skills in the work experience section
• Creating a dedicated skills section

Oftentimes, the best approach is to combine these two formatting options.

Including soft skills in your work experience section allows you to include greater context and explanation.

Comparatively, hard skills need less explanation and can benefit from being place in a separate section.

Here are two quick breakdowns for these formatting options:

Method 1: Listing Customer Service Skills in Your Work Experience Section

Work Experience Customer Service Representative, Whole Foods April 2018 – May 2020 · Good communication skills · Worked closely with customers · Learned better closing tactics

Why It’s Wrong: In this example, the bullet points are too vague and provide little information about the person’s responsibilities.

Adding in skills to your work experience section should add extra value, not detract from the descriptive nature of the section.

Work Experience Customer Service Representative, Whole Foods April 2018 – May 2020 · Communicated daily with customers through the call center · Fostered loyal customer relationships through an empathetic approach · Developed a strong closing ability and increased sales by 15 percent

In this corrected example, the skills clearly tie into the person’s qualifications.

The information given is much more insightful into the applicant’s work ethic and skill set.

ProTip: When describing skills in your work experience section, make sure to use active language. For help in doing so, take a look at our list of 350+ Action Verbs to Make Your Resume More Effective in 2024 .

Method 2: Creating a Dedicated Customer Service Skills Section

Customer Service Skills · Caring for customers · Answering the phone · Helping customers with returns · Using Microsoft Excel and other programs

Why It’s Wrong: This example fails to use strong skill keywords.

Additionally, it is not inherently bad to include extra words in a skills section.

However, these extra words should add value, not just take up space in your word count.

Customer Service Skills · Empathizing with Customers’ Specific Needs · Call Center Telecommunication · Conflict Resolution for Customer Returns · Microsoft Office Suite

In this corrected example, the extra words being used give the skill greater detail and specificity.

Do you need more help writing your ideal resume? Check out our guide on the 20 Best Resume Writing Tips and Tricks for 2024 (with a Free Checklist) !

Final Takeaways

Customer service is a massive industry with many employment opportunities.

To heighten your chances of landing a job in this field, focusing on your related skills is key.

Here are our 5 main takeaways for listing customer service skills on a resume:

• Include both your hard (technical) and soft (interpersonal) customer service skills.
• Relate your skills to the job you are applying for.
• Use skills in both your work experience section and a dedicated skills section.
• Provide context around interpersonal skills.
• Aim to include your best – or “expert-level” – skills first.

To learn more about creating the perfect resume, check out our many free resume guides and career advice articles !

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Ed is a co-founder of Easy Resume. His background in scaling teams at tech startups over the last decade has given him extensive experience and knowledge around how to hire top talent and build successful teams. He enjoys mentoring, coaching, and helping others reach their career goals. When he's not writing about career-related advice, he's playing with his dog, Lilo, or going on long hikes in upstate New York.

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