A customer service skills test for hiring, and what to put in it

A customer service skills test is a short piece of real work that every applicant does before you read their application closely. Done well, it tells you more in half an hour than a résumé does in any amount of reading: how they write, how they think, and what they do when a customer is upset.

This guide covers what to put in the test, how to keep it fair, how to score it, and what to leave out.

What the test is for

The test answers one question: can this person do the job as it really is, in your business, on your channels?

So build it from your own work. Use your own customers' questions, your own rules and your own hard moments. A generic quiz about "good service" tells you who has read about customer service. A real situation tells you who can do it.

The five parts

Most support jobs need the same five parts. Keep each one short.

1. A few screening questions

Ask only what decides whether the job can work at all: are they available for the shift, can they work the hours you need, do they have the experience you asked for. Keep it to a handful of questions. Never ask for a birth date, or for an age in years or a bracket, while people apply: in the Philippines that can break the law. There is more in what you can't ask Filipino applicants; this is general information, not legal advice.

2. A short skills check

Give a few situations from your business, each with a time limit if the job is live chat. Ask what they would do. For example: a customer asks for a refund outside your refund window; a customer writes in a language you do not support; a customer asks for something only a manager can approve.

Good questions have one clearly best answer under your rules, and the wrong answers are mistakes people really make.

3. A check of their computer and connection

For a remote job, this is part of the job. Check that their connection is steady and their computer can run your tools. It saves you from hiring a great agent who drops out of every second chat.

4. A live chat practice

This is the heart of the test. The applicant chats with a customer from your kind of business, in real time, and one moment in the chat is hard: the customer is upset, the answer is not in the rules, or the customer asks for something the agent must refuse.

Watch for three things:

• Do they check before they answer? A fast wrong answer is worse than a careful right one.
• Do they say no kindly and clearly when the answer is no?
• Do they ask, or pass the chat on, when they are not sure?

There are ready situations you can use in five chat tests to give before hiring a support agent and customer service role-play scenarios for interviews.

5. A written reply or a few written questions

For an email job, give one real customer email and ask for the reply. There is a full method in the customer service email test. For a chat job, ask two or three short written questions about how they work: a time they made a mistake with a customer and what they did next, or how they handle a rule change.

How long it should take

Short enough to finish in one sitting, and long enough to show real work. Say in the job post how long it takes and what the steps are, so people can set the time aside. People finish what they can plan for.

Time the parts that are timed in the real job. A live chat agent answers in minutes, so a chat test can be timed. An email agent has longer, so the email reply can be too.

How to score it fairly

Give everyone the same test, in the same order, with the same time limits. Then score every answer the same four ways:

1. Solved it. Did the customer get the right answer, or the right next step?
2. Tone. Was it warm, calm and right for your customers?
3. Clear English. Could a customer read it once and understand it? There is more in how to test written English for customer service.
4. Followed the rules. Above all your rules on money, refunds and accounts.

Write the scores down before you talk about anyone. Then read only the strongest few closely, and call the best three.

What to leave out

• Trivia and general knowledge. They test memory, not service.
• Personality quizzes. They tell you little about how someone handles a real customer.
• Questions about family or religion, or any age preference. They are not about the job, and in some countries asking is against the law.
• Long unpaid projects. A short work sample is fair. A full day of free work is not.

Doing it at scale

When a post brings in a hundred applicants, giving each one a live chat by hand is not possible. HireFlow builds the test from a few answers about your business, runs the live chat with a simulated customer, scores every answer the same way and ranks everyone who finishes, so the reading starts with the strongest few.

In short

• Build the test from your own customers, rules and hard moments.
• Use five short parts: screening questions, a skills check, a connection check, a live chat and a written reply.
• Say how long it takes, and time what the real job times.
• Score everyone the same four ways: solved it, tone, clear English, followed the rules.
• Never ask for a birth date, or for an age in years or a bracket, while people apply.
• Read the top few closely, and call the best three.