subject: Customer Service Skills and Interview Questions [print this page] Customer Service Skills and Interview Questions
Of course these are just examples. You'll want to create your own specific questions that you'll ask every single candidate. In general, you'll need to push for a story but that is exactly what you want the interview to be...a series of stories where the candidate tells you about the way they handled specific situations in the past. You can bet that they will be good indicators of how they will handle similar situations in the future. Once you have the basic interview questions structured, you are ready to move onto Company Fit.
Generally, Company Fit is a bit more challenging that Skill Fit and good interview questions can often get us the information that we need. In order to focus on company fit, you first need to know what types of behaviors are expected at your organization. Are you a team oriented culture or one that rewards individual contributors? Are things flexible or do you hold to specific policy? Shorts and a T-Shirt or suit and tie? Closed or open door policy with an executive? All of these components make up company fit. Your interviewer will want to ask questions like:
"Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a policy. What was your disagreement and how did you handle it?"
"Tell me about a manager that you worked for that was particularly effective. What behaviors did he/she display?"
"Tell me about a very busy day that you have had in the past. How did you go about accomplishing everything?"
The final component is Job Match. Using Job Match technology, you can assess successful incumbents in customer service roles and find out what their learning styles, behavioral traits, and occupational interests are. Each of these three components have been studied and found to be key indicators of job success-more so than experience and education alone. They indicate the following:
Thinking Style: Shows how the person processes and learns new information. It answers the question "Can the candidate cope with the mental demands of the job?"
Behavioral Traits: What are the key behaviors the job demands? It answers the question "Will the candidate be comfortable in the job environment?" It also answers the question "Will the candidate be motivated by this kind of work?"
Occupational Interests: What is this person interested in doing? Are they an artist who is applying for a data driven job?
By understanding those key components, you can then create a job match pattern for people who you know to be successful in the job. Once that pattern is created, you can then assess incoming potential talent and see where they fit in the pattern and where they lie outside of the pattern. Some job match tools even provide behavior-based interviewing questions that target areas where candidates lie outside of the job match pattern making the interviewing process even easier.
By utilizing behavior based interviewing to target Skill Fit and Company Fit and then adding in Job Match technology, you can go a long way in improving customer service. It is not easy to find great people but it is possible. Putting a solid, repeatable methodology in place is the key.
Learn more at Talent Insight Group
Jay is a leading talent management consultant based in Boston, Massachusetts. He provides business leaders with the tools and resources to bring in top talent -- whether they want to do it themselves or they want Talent Insight Group to do it for them. TIG utilizes their strategic partnership with Profiles International, an international provider of leading edge assessment tools, to provide practical consulting and training in strategic initiatives including: interviewing, hiring, and leadership development.
With over 15 years of experience in employee development, Jay has worked with over 200 global companies including General Electric, Time Warner, and ExxonMobil. In addition, Jay has brought consulting services to smaller regional organizations, helping them meet their strategic objectives.
Visit Talent Insight Group and learn more about the services Jay's company offers and download our free whitepaper 6 Steps To Managing Talent in a Tight Labor Market.
For more insight into the world of Human Resources Management, read Jay's Blog HRCleanUp!
