Getting a good career means building up a strong evidence-based CV. It is not enough to say that you have skills: you need some sort of proof in the form of qualifications and/or experience.
Customer service jobs enable you to build provable skills that you can add to your CV or Resume. Let’s say that you learn the basics of customer service assistant, and you are setting out to get a job in the customer service industry. This article covers some of the provable skills you can learn, which you may add to your CV to make it stronger.
Verbal and Communication Skills
Stating that you have good verbal and communication skills is something that you can try to demonstrate in the interview, but you become a stronger candidate if you can prove you have good verbal and communication skills through your CV.
You need to prove that you can deal with a range of different personalities. You need to show that you can handle people who come from a range of demographics, from impulsive children to conscientious middle-aged shoppers.
If you are good at your job as a customer support or customer service worker, then you have proof that you have good verbal and communication skills because they are a strong requirement for a job in customer services.
Negotiation and Persuasion Skills
Depending on the type of customer service job you get, you may be able to hone your negotiation and persuasion skills, be you selling meat at a cattle market or offering insurance quotes to large businesses. Saying you have good negotiation and persuasion skills is fine, but if you can prove it through the roles you undertake in your customer service job, then your CV appears all the stronger.
Getting Phone Skills For Your CV
Many people say that they have good phone skills and good phone etiquette when they apply for jobs, but simply stating it on your CV is not enough. On the other hand, if you sign up to work in a call center, you have rock-solid proof that you are good on the phone. You do not even need to work there for long. A year is long enough, assuming you quit yourself and do not get fired. If you have worked in a call center for a year or longer, then it is a very good thing to add to your CV, and it is proof that you are good on the phone.
Selling and Marketing Skills
As with persuading and negotiation skills, it all depends on the type of customer service job you get. Nevertheless, if your job involves selling and marketing, then add it to your CV.
As you set out to find your perfect career, it doesn’t matter what type of job you are applying for, if you are able to prove that you have selling and marketing skills, then it makes you more desirable. In even the most mundane jobs, there is an element of selling and marketing, which is why hiring managers consider selling/marketing to be strong skills for candidates to have.
You do not have to work at a car sales lot or become an estate agent. You simply need a customer service job where you sell and/or promote products. The longer you work within the role, then the better it looks on your CV, especially if you can prove that you were hitting sales targets and/or winning sales/marketing awards.
Public Relations Skills
Most people think that being good at public relations means you have to be a charming liar, but that is not the case. Your job is to fight for a company by persuading the other person to your way of thinking. The only place where lies come in is if your company genuinely is bad, or genuinely does foist poor quality products on people. In which case, you will need to work on your lying skills because everybody is bad at lying, it is just that few people realize how bad they are.
The power of persuasion has many facets, and there are certain customer service jobs where you can hone your powers of persuasion to a fine point. If you become genuinely good at persuading people, then adding PR skills to your CV makes good sense.
Up-Selling, Conversion and Recovery Sales
Surely if you have good PR skills, then you can persuade people to buy stuff? Oddly enough, persuading people not to be angry at your company, and persuading them to buy something from your company, are very different practices. It is the equivalent of being a swimmer and learning to swim in a pool against learning to swim in the ocean.
Luckily, up-selling, cross-selling, converting, and recovering sales is a little easier. At this point, your prospect is what is known as a warm lead because much of the selling groundwork has been done. Your job is to sell them a little extra, change their mind and have them buy something else, or regain a sale after it is lost. If your customer service job helps you hone any of these skills, then you should put them on your CV because they are pretty valuable.
Final Thoughts – Hitting KPIs and Target Skills
The ability to hit key performance indicators is a big part of many jobs. Many young people feel they never have the chance to prove themselves. However, there are many customer service jobs where KPIs and targets are a big deal, where they are recordable and provable. Being able to work under pressure and hit targets is a very good quality to have, and a job in some customer service roles will allow you to hit targets. Put your job role, and your achievements into your CV, and you will become a far more enticing employment prospect. The same goes with all the skills mentioned in this article: if a job teaches you any of these skills, then they are very powerful skills that you can add to your CV/Resume.
