Best interview questions for your hiring process
Call Centre Agent Interview questions
Call Centre Agents are part of a dedicated customer service support team, who will ensure your customers or clients can always get the answers you need about your product or service.
These are the important qualities to look for in a Call Centre Agent:
- Excellent communicator (both verbal and written)
- Rapid problem-solving skills
- Excellent ability to think quickly and on their feet
- Basic sales and upskilling ability
- Confident using telephones
- Skilled with Microsoft Office and/or a CRM
Interviewing a Call Centre Agent
A Call Centre Agent is an essential hire for any team looking to improve their customer service offering and to build a link between the business and their customer base. Since this role will have direct contact with your customers, they need to be confident and able to represent the business appropriately.
To help ensure your interview process is set up to find a person capable of these things, we’ve put together this Call Centre Agent interview guide.
How to open the job interview
While Call Centre Agents will be confident communicating with strangers and getting their points across, they may still feel nervous before a big interview! Therefore, it is a good idea to put your potential hire at ease using these easy opening questions.
Best interview questions for your hiring process
See our Call Centre Agent job description hereFor the interview
A positive opener to start
What has been one of your proudest moments as a Call Centre Agent?
Why did you choose a career in customer service?
Behavioral Questions
Name a time you were faced with an angry or disappointed customer and managed to turn the conversation around completely?
Tell me about the most challenging customer or client question you have received. How did you deal with this?
Naturally, a Call Centre Agent won’t have an answer to every question that a customer poses. Here, you’re looking for quick and efficient steps that an Agent took to rectify the situation. They may have put the customer on hold and asked a colleague for help, for example.
Tell me about a time you gave a customer incorrect information. How did you handle this?
Here, your candidate should mention correcting themselves as soon as they realise their mistake. They should then take active steps to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
Talk me through a time when you have helped a colleague to improve their customer service skills
While Call Centre Agents mostly work independently, they will have a team who can support them or they can support. Knowing your candidate is willing and able to help their team is a huge green flag for this role.
Soft Skills
How do you ensure you’re giving each customer top service on an extremely busy day?
A Call Centre Agent will often be faced with multiple calls at once and extremely busy periods. However, this shouldn’t impact the quality of their service. Here, you’re looking for their prioritisation skills as well as an understanding of the importance of quality service.
What steps would you take if you received a negative piece of feedback from your line manager?
Here, you’re looking for a candidate who can calmly and professionally take the feedback into consideration and turn it into actions. These actions should then be utilised in future calls.
What skills do you have that help you as a Call Centre Agent?
Here a candidate will be able to tell you about their confidence areas which make them the best choice for the role. This can include soft skills such as communication and organisation, or hard skills such as CRM platforms.
When explaining a technical fix to a customer who has less understanding of the product than you, how do you ensure they are following?
Here, a candidate should explain some communication techniques they use in these situations. Such as providing space for customers to ask questions, providing clear steps, and real-world examples.
Hard Skills
What is the most difficult product/service you have worked with when it comes to Call Center services?
This Call Center interview question is especially important if the product/service you offer is particularly technical or complex. The answer here will allow you to assess a candidate’s experience against your business.
How do you usually keep record of a customer’s requests or questions?
Here a candidate may mention CRMs or more generalised tools. This will give you an idea of their experience and what they need to be onboarded with.
Which languages can you communicate fluently in?
This Call Center question is especially important for expanding or international businesses.
Have you received any formal communication or customer service training?
In most cases this won’t be essential, however, it can certainly help to gain points for a candidate during an interview.
Do you have sales experience?
Whether this question is relevant will depend on your needs from the role. It can sometimes be useful to have a Call Centre Agent comfortable in sales, as they can then upsell deals and products to customers.
Operational / Situational Questions
If a customer or client asked a question that you weren’t sure how to reply to, what would you do?
Here, you’re looking for a candidate who can use their initiative. Checking a script, guidebook, or getting help from their colleague are all answers that show a candidate will work well during a high-pressure situation such as this.
If when assisting customers, you noticed the question or comments with similar themes were often popping up, how would you deal with this?
Here, a candidate should mention forwarding this information to the relevant departments. They may also make changes to the script/guidebook to include this information, which will help future colleagues.
Imagine you have a busy shift, but a customer is taking up a lot of your time by being extra chatty. How would you proceed?
Your candidate should mention politely, but efficiently ending the conversation once the customer has been sufficiently assisted.
If you were to join our team as a Call Centre Agent, what would your first actions be?
Your potential Call Centre Agent should mention getting to grips with your product or service, as well as familiarising themselves with your business processes.
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Dealing with customers who aren’t happy is an unfortunate certainty in a Call Centre Agent role. This question aims to see if an Agent is capable of staying calm and professional and ensuring a customer feels heard and satisfied with the service they receive.