Short of inventing a time machine there’s no guaranteed method, which makes an interview one of the most important tools you have to vet a customer candidate.

The right interview questions reveal more useful information about a candidate than their work history, because they force interviewees to think on their feet, drawing on their experience to answer pointed questions. Seeing how they react speaks volumes about how they will handle real-life situations, and will help you avoid wasting time and energy on hiring the wrong person.

Divide these interview questions among your hiring team, and you’ll get the information you need to hire top customer service talent.

Structuring Your Interview Q&A

The best interviews are not strict question-and-answer patterns; they’re structured conversations that draw out candidates’ attitudes, strengths and challenges.

Encourage candidates to use a storytelling approach: Tell them you’re not looking for hypothetical “this is what I would do if that happened” answers. Ask for specific, detailed stories about their experiences and their behaviors in those situations.

Don’t be afraid to dig deeper: Your questions are only starting places for conversational topics. If the answer is interesting or concerning, ask follow-up questions to uncover more details.

It’s OK to ask similar questions: Often the best stories will come out when a candidate has had a few minutes to think about an earlier question. By revisiting important areas, you give them the best chance to reveal their character and skill to you.

Don’t rush to fill silence: It’s OK to let your candidates sit quietly before they answer a question. It can give them time to formulate their thoughts, and it can also result in them revealing more than they initially intended.

Customer service approach

1.What does good customer service mean to you?

2.What appeals to you about this role specifically?

3.What’s the best customer service you’ve ever received? Why?

4.Can you tell me about a time you received poor customer service?

5.Is there a difference between customer service and customer support?

Emotional intelligence, empathy and behavior

6.Can you tell me about a time when you were proud of the level of service you gave a customer?

7.Have you ever dealt with an unreasonable customer? How did you handle it, and how would you handle it today?

8.Have you ever bent the rules in assisting a customer? Tell me the situation and the outcome.

9.In your past work, have you ever received negative feedback from a customer? What did you do with that feedback?

10.Can you tell me about a customer that you found difficult to understand, and how you approached that interaction?

11.Can you describe a time when you had to say “no” to an important customer’s request?

12.What’s the best way to help a customer who has worked with multiple agents and hasn’t received the help they need?

Problem solving

13.Have you had a time when a customer was reporting a technical issue that you didn’t know the answer to? What was your approach, and how did it end up?

14.Can you tell me about a situation with a customer when there wasn’t a clear policy to use, and you needed to make a judgement call? How did you approach your decision, and what happened?

15.Can you give me an example of a situation where there were major problems with your product/service, and you needed to respond without having all the answers yet?

Communication skills

16.Can you give an example of how you handled alerting a customer when your product/service caused a major problem?

17.When responding to a customer, how do you decide what information to include, and what to leave out?

18.Can you tell me about a time when you needed to convince a customer or a teammate to change the way they were working (e.g., adopt a new procedure or modify their language), and how you went about that?

Attitude and approach to work

19.What’s the last new skill you learned? Why did you choose that skill, and how did you learn it?

20.Can you tell me about a time when you made a great contribution to your team?

21.What’s the next book I should read? Why?

22.What are you better at today than you were this time last year?

23.What do you think makes a good teammate?

Do you have unusual interview questions you’ve had success with in past interviews? Share in the comments below!

Putting a priority on searching for change and opportunities that arise from change? Customer insight is a great place to find a happy customer needs, yes? Simple ways to maximize customer insight can be a great way to improve your business.

Happy customers?

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Peter Drucker

Let me share an experience with you.

Recently I had the occasion to visit my local Best Buy. While I was there for one purpose, I decided to have a look at some of the new tablets. A very helpful young man came and provided me with excellent information about the various features and benefits to the different offerings. I wasn’t interested in purchasing that day, so I thanked him and went on my way with my other purchases.

When I went to pay, I asked if I could provide a positive comment about one of the staff who had been so helpful.

The answer was that to provide feedback — either positive of negative — I needed to visit their website. When I explained that I wasn’t interested in filling out a survey — I simply wanted to pass on a compliment to a manager for a job well done by a staff member — I was told they were not set up to receive comments at the store level. Of course, I could have requested that I speak with a manager or a supervisor, but it wasn’t worth my trouble.

It would appear that Best Buy isn’t interested in hearing feedback. That is not a good thing for any business, is it?

We conclude that many businesses either don’t put a priority on collecting inputs from their customers or don’t know how.

In this article, we will offer some effective tips to perform insight collection and simple analysis. Let us get started with tips.

Connect

Connect and always try to move closer to all your customers and especially your best customers. You learn most when you build close relationships with them.

Immerse your perspective

Change your perspective and consider alternative roles. Try and eliminate the single role perspective at all costs and view things from as many angles as possible. You will be amazed at the difference it will make.

Happy customer … never overlook details

There are no details you should consider as ‘unimportant.’ Until you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, it is difficult to know the importance of each of these customer needs and priorities.

Look for connections

Do you consider connections between seemingly unrelated observations? Try and connect the dots between different facts and observations? It is crucial to continue iterating and building the puzzle of facts and their relationships.

You are never done putting the customer puzzle together, are you? I hope not because the customers are changing quite rapidly.

Maximize customer insight … always dig deeper

Digging deeper is essential for uncovering more details. Can you think of ‘just one more question’? Use all of your curiosity and imagination.

Each new fact that you discover often generates new information needs. All of us need to keep up.

Use your personal experience

Use what you have learned previously, but don’t be biased by it. Don’t let your values and views take charge of getting the true picture.

Validate and continually refine

Always look for evidence to continually validate and refine the insights you have gained.

Now let’s examine an example to amplify these tips:

Just before Thanksgiving, I was at Walmart to make a return. It was a Saturday morning, and the line at the returns counter was long. The more we waited, the more impatient the customers became and increasingly, many took out their displeasure on the returns clerk with opinions on the poor service and lengthy wait.

When I reached the counter, the clerk was scowling and very tense. I smiled and complimented how well she was able to handle so many disgruntled customers. You could see her tension disappear and she also displayed her first smile since I had been there.

In that situation had she been able to listen and mentally record inputs from her customers? Had I offered her an idea on how to speed things up on the returns desk, would she be able to process the information? In this case, I did offer a suggestion, and she did understand and take note of the input.

This story illustrates one of many difficulties in listening to customers and gaining insights. The first part of listening is hearing and, of course, hearing the customer necessitates that they speak. So our first consideration is ‘how do we get our customer to speak with us?’ (Note: hopefully without creating such a negative experience as in this story)

Why is it that customers seem to be reluctant to giving their inputs? I believe there are three main reasons:

First we business people make it difficult and inconvenient (if not impossible) for customers to give us their views.

Second, there is no perception on the customer’s part of an equitable mutual exchange of value … will they ever see a result of their input?

And finally, many of our staff act as if they don’t care. All of us need to weed these guys out quickly.

So to receive more inputs from customers, (1) be more personable to create better relationships, (2) make it convenient, and (3) pay back the value with an active, caring interest in your customer’s advice.

Listen carefully not only to what they say but how they say it because that gives the most important clues as to the effects we are having on our customers. Ask yourselves: Did we intend to create that effect? If not, what effect do we desire? How do we create that effect?

WINNING ADVERTISEmeNT DESIGN — Want to build a winning advertisement design?

Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.