Best Customer Service Resume: How to Make Yours Stand Out [with Examples]

One of the great things about customer service is that the skills you develop can be relevant to a lot of different jobs. The best customer service resume showcases those skills along with your unique personality and your diverse experiences.

Successfully marrying all of these elements into a one-page resume can be daunting for anyone. But fear not — there are steps you can take to ensure your resume is as strong as possible without causing you tons of stress.

In this post, let's review the sections you need to include in a successful customer service resume, as well as example resumes that you can use as inspiration for your next application.

Jump ahead:

• What is a customer service resume?
• How to Write the Best Customer Service Resume
• What to Include in Your Customer Service Resume
• Top 10 Best Customer Service Resume Examples
• Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Some common customer service roles include:

• Customer service representatives
• Customer support specialists
• Customer success managers

As highlighted above and shown in the image below, there are five ways you can write a customer service resume that gets the attention of prospective employers.

Let's review each below.

1. Start from a template.

While it's important to make sure your resume is unique to you, there are a number of templates available to help you get started. For example, HubSpot has a selection of free resume templates that are fully customizable to the job you're applying for.

Featured Resource: Free Resume Templates

Download These Templates for Free

2. Keep it clear and concise.

Keep in mind that you only have a limited amount of time to impress job recruiters. And many are quickly skimming through a sea of resumes for each open position. Keep your resume short and sweet, and make it easy for employers to see that you're the right fit up front.

3. Use the right keywords.

Speaking of skimming, hiring managers are also looking for a few magic words that tell them you're a good candidate to move to the next round. Look at the job description closely, and make sure your resume aligns with the language your prospective employer is using.

4. Highlight specific accomplishments.

It's great to know that you've "positively interacted with customers", but so has just about every other applicant vying for the same position you're applying for. Get specific, and try to quantify your experiences where possible (e.g., resolved x amount of customer inquiries per day).

5. Showcase your personality.

Show recruiters what makes you, you. What qualities will you bring to the team? Infusing your personality is one more way you can separate yourself out from the crowd.

Now that we've reviewed some fundamentals about how to write your resume, let's get into what you should include.

What to Include in Your Customer Service Resume

The best sections to include in your customer service resume are an objective or summary along with details about your skills, experience and accomplishments, and education.

Customer Service Resume Objective or Summary (Optional)

Depending on the position, it may make sense to start your resume with an overview of who you are, what you're looking for, and what you'll bring to the position. You can put this in paragraph or bullet-form at the beginning of your resume to make it clear to whoever is reading it.

However, if you're running out of room on the page, it's OK to omit a summary. You can always take what you would've written and weave it into other sections on your resume.

Here are a few examples of customer service principles you can highlight in this section.

Putting the customer first.

Companies know that customer interactions with the product and the business are incredibly important. Making this stance clear will show hiring managers that your priorities are in line with theirs.

Teaching rather than explaining.

Customer autonomy is a huge bonus for a hiring manager. Let them know that you want to be so good at what you do that the customer's understanding of the product might reach a level where they no longer reach out to your team as often.

Desiring challenges from an unpredictable environment.

A day in the life of a customer service representative can be extremely unpredictable. Adding this as an objective will make it clear that you're ready to hit the ground running. Plus, it will reassure the hiring managers that you know what you're applying for.

Growing your technical and product knowledge.

Learning is a huge part of customer service. So, showing eagerness to grow in technical and product knowledge is extremely vital to include on your resume.

Next up, let's talk about skills.

Another important section to include is the skills that you've developed as a customer service professional. Here are eight good ones to highlight.

1. Learning Potential

This is the big one. No matter what level of knowledge you have about the product or the business, you're going to be trained and coached. With this in mind, you need to show a willingness to learn, whether it be in a classroom or on the phone with a customer.

2. Communication

Though somewhat self-explanatory, these skills become more nuanced when you think about the different types of customers a company has. Can you take a technical concept and clearly explain it to people of all backgrounds? Plus, in addition to customers, you're going to need to be able to effectively communicate with your team too.

3. Adaptability

This can range from scheduling adaptability to troubleshooting on the fly. What do you do when your "surefire" troubleshooting step doesn't work? Are you cool under the pressure of the follow-up question? No matter what your level of product knowledge is, having adaptability and flexibility is going to be an asset.

4. Self-Motivation

Even though many companies block time for their reps to be on the phone, it's likely that no one will tell you what to do with your day as a whole. Self-motivation is a huge personality trait in this position, because it's one that no training team or manager can teach. At the end of the day, you have to want to be there and want to help solve for your customers.

5. Product and Industry Expertise

While this trait isn't imperative for getting hired, it is a nice detail that can stand out on your resume. Showing that you have a firm understanding of the product and its industry lets hiring managers know that you're not only ahead of other candidates, but that you also have a genuine passion for the business.

6. Emotional Intelligence

While product knowledge may be optional at first, emotional intelligence isn't. Emotional intelligence refers to your ability to interpret the thoughts and feelings of others and respond to them in an appropriate way. This skill is incredibly important for service reps because it creates a personalized and delightful customer experience.

7. Problem-Solving

If you know the saying, "when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade," then your resume should make you look like an enterprise-level lemonade salesperson. Customer service is all about solving problems, and often, the solutions to those problems aren't clear. In many cases, reps need to think on their feet to come up with creative solutions to meet customer needs.

8. Improvisation

As a customer service rep, it's your job to do everything within reason to prevent churn. Sometimes, this requires creative problem-solving and the ability to improvise when things go wrong. Keeping cool and making the right choices in stressful situations is an incredibly valuable skill in customer service.

Once you've laid out your skills, you'll need to back them up.

Next up, let's talk about professional experience and accomplishments.

Customer Service Resume Experience & Accomplishments

In this section, you'll want to cover your recent professional experience in depth, especially with regard to your career progression, projects completed, and milestones reached.

Here are some examples.

Customer Service or Professional Experience

If you're applying for a position in customer service and you've already worked in a customer-facing role, make sure your resume highlights your industry experience. This includes what industry your company was a part of, what metrics you used to measure success, what goals you achieved, and the impact you've had on the company.

If you're applying for a customer service role and you don't have industry experience, do some brainstorming about the transferable skills and experiences that would serve you in a customer-facing role. For example, if your previous experience is in marketing, you've probably developed effective communication skills. And, most importantly, think about why you want to move into customer service so your resume effectively communicates that.

Career Progression and Advancement Details

Were you promoted in your last role? Did you ever manage a team? Did you collaborate with other colleagues on side projects, experiments, or campaigns? Were you tapped to lead an experiment or test case?

Make sure the experience section of your resume details examples of you being recognized or rewarded for going above and beyond. Hiring managers want to hire the best of the best, so make sure you highlight examples of this.

Volunteer or Community Involvement

If you're involved in your community, feel free to include that work on your resume as long as it's relevant to the position. Including experiences like these will help you stand out to employers. Plus, it gives hiring managers an idea of what you like to do outside of work.

Next up, let's talk about education.

Customer Service Resume Education

In this section, you'll want to make sure you showcase your educational background. This includes any classes, research, projects, or accolades that speak to your ability to excel, your commitment and grit, and your industry expertise.

Here are some examples.

Higher Education Background and Achievements

Make sure your resume details your highest levels of educational attainment. Note where you studied, what you studied, your GPA, and any particularly relevant projects or research you worked on.

It's okay if you didn't major in the industry you're applying to (not all of us have). But education helps round out your overall workplace knowledge and experience.

Additional Professional or Educational Training

If you've taken training courses, certificate programs, or attended classes as part of your on-the-job training, include those diplomas in your resume as well — especially if they might be part of the tech stack the team you're applying to uses.

Now that we've broken down what to include on your customer service resume, let's take a look at a few examples you can use as inspiration for your application.

Top 10 Best Customer Service Resume Examples

Check out the list below for the top ten best customer service resume examples for roles across the industry. Each customer service resume sample includes what we like about it.

1. Entry Level Customer Service Representative

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What we like: This resume is a great example of someone who has no direct customer service experience, but does have experience interacting with customers of different backgrounds. The fictitious Justine has made a clean-looking resume that clearly states the experience she has had working with customers, and shows familiarity with hitting a metric of some kind in her sales position.

2. Mid-Level Customer Service Representative

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What we like: "Lily's" resume is a great example of someone who has a mixed background with both directly and tangentially-relevant experience. She was a bank teller before she broke into the customer service industry, and putting it on her resume shows diversity and opens a conversation about why she began a career in customer service.

3. Experienced Customer Service Representative

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What we like: It's easy to tell right away that "Marie Clark" has been killing it in the customer service industry for some time now. She takes some space at the top to highlight what sets her over the edge as an applicant, making it clear she loves what she does and wants to make a career out of it.

4. Personalized Customer Service Resume

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What we like: This clean and creative resume helps the candidate stand out right off the bat while still allowing room to fit all of their awesome experience. The addition of a photo adds a face to their qualifications. And in a career where you might communicate with customers solely over email or phone, it's important to show that you're more than just a faceless resource.

5. Classic Customer Service Resume

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What we like: This is a prime example of a no-nonsense resume that still looks great. It's classic, clean, and clear, which can be a relief to recruiters and hiring managers who may look at hundreds of resumes a day. This formatting allows your experience to speak for itself, and would be a great option for a candidate who has a lot of prior experience.

6. Formal Customer Service Resume

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What we like: This resume is an effective mix of the first two we've shown in this article. The pops of color and headshot show uniqueness while the formatting leaves a lot of space for what you want to include. It's muted and easy to read, so no one element is overwhelming to the point of throwing it off balance.

7. White Space Customer Service Resume

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What we like: This resume stands out because it's the first one we've seen in the article that utilizes the full width of the page. If you really need the extra space, this single-column format allows those extra inches on the side so your qualifications take up less vertical space. This can help your resume look less bunchy, and is extremely easy for your potential employers to follow.

8. Customer Support Engineer Resume

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What we like: This customer support engineer resume lets the skills and experience speak for themselves. It's simple, straightforward formatting might not be advisable for a creative role, but for a technologist, it's not as mission-critical as standing out and impressing a hiring manager.

9. Customer Service Manager Resume

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What we like: This customer service manager resume highlights this candidate's experience and impact, which is critical when applying for a leadership role. Using color, a modern font, and bullet formatting, this resume effectively divides the different sections while highlighting the most important aspects of this candidate's background.

10. Call Center Resume

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What we like: This resume outlines all of the skills and qualifications needed to work in a call center. It starts by listing the candidate's key attributes then backs them up using their professional experience. On the right, it outlines other skills that the candidate possesses and categorizes them by either "hard" or "soft." This not only tells an employer what this candidate can do, but it also shows that they're organized and think logically.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

The best customer service resume is the one that gets your foot in the door to "wow" them during the job interview. Take the time to build out a resume that truly makes you and your accomplishments shine.