Customer Service Job Interview: How To Answer ‘Tell Me About Yourself’

By Selipha Kihagi

Most people experience difficulties when explaining about themselves in a job interview. Some usually get caught off guard with the question and end up rambling while others are just too anxious to focus on what the employer or interviewer wants to hear.

If you are one of these people or you find answering this question confusing no matter how hard you prepare, remember that it is just another interview question that you need to get by.

What The Interviewer Expects From This Question

If you are scheduled for a Customer service job interview, then it means you have already impressed them with your CV and Cover Letter when you applied for the position. Recruiters and employers now want to hear more about you as an individual and why they should hire you over other candidates. For this reason, it is important that you prepare well and to do this you will need to satisfy their curiosity.

So how do you do this? First identify that the interviewer wants to be impressed to consider you the best fit and that the question is open-ended, meaning that you can start from anywhere you are most comfortable. Also know that the interviewer wants to hear about your strengths and see how they relate to the job at hand, so focus on explaining how good you are. The question is a good way to market your skills and ability.

How Do You Best Answer The Question?

As a customer service professional, your best skills will be customer and client related as you have to interact with customers on behalf of the company on a daily basis. So your ideal response to the ‘Tell me about yourself’ question that will make sure the interviewer remembers to recommend you for the position should center on such skills.

Think about your strengths, what skills are you good at? Also, how well do you handle conflict? (Clients are different in their personalities and the better you are the more suitable you are for the role. Can you manage multiple tasks simultaneously? Once you have established your expertise and matched it to the requirements of the job, you can then structure your answer and practice it over and over. Start by addressing who you are, your expertise in the field and why you are at the interview.

An example answer to the ‘Tell me about yourself’ question

“I’m a proactive Customer Service Assistant with 4 years of experience handling various functions of Customer service, from dealing with dissatisfied customers to answering phone calls. In my current position at company X, I have developed and utilized various skills to help achieve results and contribute to the company’s productivity.

I have also won several awards for my exceptional performance in solving customer problems and forming new customer relations that resulted in a 20% increase in sales.

Although I love my job, I feel I am now ready for further growth in a more challenging role at a company that values customer relations, and this position meets those exact needs.”

Attributing your results in the form of numbers or percentage shows employers just how good you are in your  job and is a surefire way of creating a lasting good impression. Focus on selling yourself to employers when answering this question and everything else will fall into place.

Do you have a question you would want addressed? Leave a comment.

22 Comments

  1. Just be yourself and let the interviewer that you would like to experience something different. that you always liked to interact with people and you`re ready to assist and provide excellent contributions to customer service for all customers. I myself was a teacher of foreign languages for 10 years and was able to work as a customer service representative in different places .

  2. Hi. Am a new comer to this site. Am deeply interested in customer service jobs. Have been a teacher for almost t’en years now and am afraid I Will get looked over in Most of the positions am interested in. What sort of advise would You give someone like me

  3. I would like to know the type of questions you can ask them whenever they ask u if you have any questions.

  4. I want to update my cv because am planning to apply for a position in a big company, i thought of finding a way to a passport on the upper right hand corner of my cv, is it a good idea or i have gone too far?

  5. Is this question the same as, What makes you think that you are the best for this job…if not then how do i answer such a question? Thnk you

  6. Thank you Selifa,
    How do you answer the question of tell us about yourself in a marketing interview?

  7. Hi Dorcas,

    We will do a follow up on the same. In the mean time, here is a related article you can use to come up with an ideal answer.

  8. Hi Selipha Kihagi, how do i go along with this issue of job searching for my wife who is an Architect by proffession coz she is giving up for not being taken in consideration for reasons she is Tanzanian by origin. Despite having all legale paper work done. Imaging we studied both abroad coming back to Kenya, Kenya is not welcoming yet she holds high and quality skills. And she is mother of their compatriot. Please advise on same.
    Thanks for attention
    Musungu Richard.

  9. Thanks for your continued support and dissemination of interview answers
    -How do you answer a question on ‘tell me about yourself question for finance and admin position.
    -Answer for the question on how to deal with difficult colleagues

  10. I wish you would address the question of ‘ why are you leaving your current job for this one?”
    2. what are you going to bring on board once we hire you?

  11. thank you for the script, I feel more confident in the approach of such a question in an interview room

  12. Thanks too for your good job you people are doing, i’m kindly requesting you to explain how to answer “Tell me about yourself in adriver job interview”

  13. When asked to state your last or current salary on your CV, where exactly should it fall at? Is it right below where you’re currently working or your most recent job? Or should it be just above the referees section?

  14. Hello Wilberforce,

    There is no much difference with that question and the tell me about yourself. So approach it as is shown in the first section of the sample answer provided above.

  15. Thank you for the nice job..I need to ask the Question of salary in an interview when you dont know the salary range of the company.”How much do you want us to pay you”?

  16. IS BA general still marketable? Are the BA graduates on demand? More so Economics and Sociology combination

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