Employers number one priority is customer focus. Employees with a customer focused outlook are hugely important to most if not all employers. Whichever industry you're working in and whatever level you're working at is highly likely that you will be involved with customers in some way. stakeholdermap.comYou need to be prepared to talk about your approach to customer service in your next job interview!
Customers value a great experience and 86% of customers are even prepared to pay more for a better experience.Use these example job interview questions to prepare for your next job interview.
Even if you are in the back office or the warehouse your commitment to customer focus will show through in the work that you do.
These questions are real examples and are a good way to prepare for interviews because they use a very common model of interview questioning called the competency model.
Customer Focus interview questions
- Give me an example of one experience in your job that reflects your commitment to customer focus?
- Tell me about a time when you received a customer complaint. What did you do?
- If you are asked to move to another department in the organization, which one would you prefer? Why?
- What you think is the most important change going on in your industry?
- What do you do to keep current on trends and changes in your field?
- Explain to me how you think [Insert company name] operates as a business?
- How does your current job contribute to your company meeting the needs of its customers?
- Customers frequently create a great deal of pressure. What has been your experience in this area?
- Describe a situation that demonstrates your approach to handling conflicts with customers.
- What have you done when you have realised you weren't able to meet the expectations of the customer?
- Tell me about a time when you have dealt with the customer complaint that was not your fault?
- Tell me about a time when you have responded to a customer complaint that was your fault?
- Tell me about a time when you've had to deal with an angry customer either face-to-face or on the phone.
- Have you ever had the task of turning a customer relationship around? How did you go about it?
- How do you keep your customers happy?
Competency based interview questions
Competency focused questions are designed to help draw out a person's experience by asking for examples of when they have performed a function or have shown that they have a skill/competency. This style of questioning is popular because it is more likely to draw out whether a person has the competencies to perform a role.Models that used closed questions like 'tell me what x means' tend to exclude younger or less experienced candidates and won't necessarily identify a person who has the right competence - experience of Customer Service doesn't mean you were good at Customer Service.