QUIZ: Are You About to Hire a Customer Service Superstar?

As the owner of a service-based business, you most likely interview a good deal of candidates for customer service positions. Walking into every meeting is a little like going on a first date with someone you hope one day will be good enough to introduce to your mother. But unlike a romantic courtship, you aren’t likely to get a few months to spend with this person before the family intro dinner. In the business world, you are forced to make decisions pretty quickly—after two, maybe three interviews at best.

So how can you tell if the person sitting in front of you is the one who will knock your customers’ socks off?

I mentally go through a list of four questions every time I interview someone for a customer service position.

Are they prepared?

Ask them to walk you through their resume. Future customer service superstars will be energetic and happily answer all of your questions. Their resumes will be spelling and grammar-checked. Stay away from candidates that can’t explain gaps in their resume or exhibit negative feelings towards former employers.

Talk to them about the position they are applying for. What attracted them to the position? What do they know about your company? Answers will show you how much they prepared for the interview. The better the answers, the more they prepared, which can translate into preparation for how they will handle customer questions in the future.

Are they ambitious?

Interviews are designed to put people on the spot, so throw out some hard balls at your candidate. Ask them about their goals and how they define success. Here, I don’t look for canned answers about five-year-plans. Instead, I ask them to tell me about their goals outside the office. Extra curricular activites and achievements—be it running a race or learning a new language—are good signs of ambition.

Are they sincere?

There are few things worse than sitting down with a candidate and feeling like that person is reading off a teleprompter. I will ask what motivates a candidate to succeed and some of the best answers have been personal, where someone looks you in the eye and says, “I want to support my family,” or, “I am motivated by wanting to put my son through college.” These are real answers. If they are real with you, they will be real with your customers.

Can they think fast?

The best customer service representatives think quickly on their feet. I often test this by walking candidates over to a dry erase board in our break room and asking them, on the spot, to write their favorite quote. Some candidates freeze. Some refuse (never a good sign). And some come up with incredible quotes like, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” We hired that person; he is one of our top reps today.