Name the channel, the volume and the customer

"Customer service representative" covers a phone line for a mobile operator, a live-chat queue for an online shop and second-line technical support for a software product. These are different jobs with different pay, and the recruiter needs to know which one you did.

For each role, say which channels you worked (phone, email, chat, social, in-app), roughly how many contacts a day, whether the customers were consumers or business accounts, and whether you were first line or handled escalations. "Tier 2 support for B2B SaaS customers, 40–60 tickets a day via chat and email" is a job description in one line.

Use the metrics your team was measured on

Every support team tracks numbers, and they are the easiest evidence of quality you can put in a CV. Use the ones your manager reported on and give the target next to your figure, because 94% only means something against a target of 90%.

• CSAT or NPS: your score, the team target and the period it covers.
• First-contact resolution rate and, for phone work, average handling time.
• SLA compliance, for example first response within one hour on priority tickets.
• QA or quality audit scores, especially if you were in the top group of the team.
• Anything that reduced future contacts: help-centre articles, macros, process changes, and the effect they had.
• If you do not have exact numbers, use honest ranges ("consistently above the 90% CSAT target") rather than leaving the section empty.

List tools by name, not "CRM systems"

Applicant tracking systems match keywords, and hiring managers want to know how long you will take to become productive. Both need the actual product names.

Write out Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Freshdesk, Intercom, HubSpot, Genesys, Talkdesk, Jira or whichever you used, and add what you did with them if it went beyond answering tickets: building macros, maintaining a knowledge base, setting up views or reporting. A tool you only saw in training does not belong in the list.

Languages: CEFR level and where you used them

In multilingual support hubs the language is the hiring criterion. A German-speaking role in Dublin will not be filled by someone with "German: good", because the recruiter cannot tell whether that means ordering coffee or handling an angry customer on the phone.

Use CEFR levels (A1 to C2) for every language, mark your native language as such, and say which languages you actually supported customers in. Keep the levels honest: a language test in the first interview is standard practice, and a candidate who claimed C1 and shows B1 is rejected on trust, not on the language.

If you hold a certificate such as DELE, DELF, Goethe or Cambridge, list it under certificates with the issuer and date.

Format for an international employer in Europe

An English-language CV for a company on the continent follows a few conventions that differ from the US resume and, in places, from the UK CV.

• A4, two pages at most, in a single column that an applicant tracking system can parse.
• A photo is optional and depends on the country: still common in Germany, France and Spain, unusual in Ireland and the Netherlands. When in doubt, leave it out; it is never a reason to reject an otherwise good CV.
• A short GDPR consent clause at the bottom is not legally required in most countries, but some employers still expect it, especially in Poland, Italy and Spain. It does no harm, and the builder can switch it off for the UK.
• No date of birth, marital status or full address. City and country are enough.
• Dates as month and year, in a consistent format throughout.

Mistakes that cost interviews

These are the reasons a solid support CV gets passed over.

• A skills section made of adjectives: "empathetic", "patient", "excellent communicator". Show them through results instead.
• No channel or volume, so the recruiter cannot tell a chat queue from a switchboard.
• Language levels without a scale, or inflated levels that collapse at the first interview.
• Tools described as "CRM software" with no product names.
• Listing every duty from the job advert instead of what changed because you were there.
• A two-column template with icons that comes out scrambled in the applicant tracking system.