Behavioral Interviewing: Assessing Customer Focus Skills

I can’t think of a single organization or business that isn’t concerned with customer service. Customer service is not just important in retail where there are obvious customers. Where I work, our customers are patients and even doctors and nurses.

In an interview where you are assessing customer focus, start with providing the applicant an idea of what you see as good customer focus. Here’s an example of what you could say.

Customer focus is the ability to build strong relationships with internal and external customers and identify and meet their needs and to use customer feedback to improve your own performance.

Here’s one potential question that would assess the candidates ability to provide good customer service.

People are often pulled in different directions all at once. Tell me about a time when you were able to prioritize the customer’s needs even though you were very busy.

For the candidate:

When you respond to this question, you’ll want to think of a time when you were very busy but saw a customer who needed something from you and put your work aside to help that customer. Take care not to use an example where you simply let your work go. But rather, think of a time when you delegated your task to another person while you helped the customer. This will show the manager that, even though you knew you needed to put the customer first, you also understood the importance of your other tasks and did not want to neglect them.

For the manager:

When interpreting the response think about whether the candidate’s example was one where it was evident that he/she looked for the most effective solution for the customer and not just a simple execution of pre-scripted solutions. If the story was about an angry customer and it seemed appropriate, did the candidate try to calm the customer or he/she simply escalate the problem to a supervisor or manager? If the candidate was unable to articulate any specific examples as you requested, this could mean that they are lacking sufficient customer service skills or critical thinking skills.

Stay tuned for more Assessing Skills through Behavioral Interviewing segments in the coming hours.

More on Behavioral Interviewing from Interview-Chatter:

Behavioral Interview: An Introduction

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