Customer Service Advisor CV Example (UK)

Contact centre managers hire a Customer Service Advisor on resolution, tone and volume, and they measure all three. Your CV should name the channels you work on (phone, webchat, email, social, in branch), the number of contacts you take a day, and the measures your team is held to: customer satisfaction, first contact resolution, quality scores and complaints handled within the rules of the FCA or Ofcom where they apply. Numbers turn a common job title into an application a team leader can picture on the floor.

The Sample CV below is for an advisor with five years in a Newcastle water company's contact centre and a broadband provider's webchat team. Each bullet pairs a measure with the habit behind it, and it shows the extra responsibilities that lead to a senior advisor or team leader post: escalations, buddying new starters and writing knowledge base articles.

Tailor it for each vacancy. Utilities and banks want complaint handling and regulated conversations; telecoms want retention and webchat; retail wants orders and returns; the NHS and councils want patience and a safeguarding eye. The US counterpart of this page is the customer service representative resume example, written for American employers on a single Letter page; a UK CV uses the title Advisor and up to two sides of A4.

Updated . The person and employers in this Sample CV are fictional. Written for applicants in the UK; the page for applicants in the US is the customer service representative resume example.

Customer Service Advisor sample CV

Drawn at A4 proportions, the paper a UK CV is printed on.

Jade Whitlock

Customer Service Advisor, Phone and Webchat

Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1jade.whitlock@example.com07700 900684

Summary

Customer service advisor with five years in utilities and broadband contact centres, handling 60 to 70 calls and webchats a day on billing, payment plans and faults. Hold a customer satisfaction score of 94 per cent and one of the highest first contact resolution rates on a team of 38, and take the escalated calls newer advisors cannot close. Patient with an angry customer, quick on the systems and trusted with vulnerable customer flags.

Experience

Senior Customer Service Advisor, Tyne Water Services

– Present

Newcastle upon Tyne

  • Handle 60 to 70 calls and webchats a day on bills, meter readings, leaks and payment plans, with a customer satisfaction score of 94 per cent over the last year.
  • Resolve most contacts first time by learning the tariff and social tariff rules in depth, and follow up open cases before the customer has to call back.
  • Take escalated calls from newer advisors and set up payment plans and Priority Services Register entries that keep vulnerable customers supplied.
  • Wrote fourteen knowledge base articles on common billing questions; repeat calls on those topics fell after they went live and the quality team adopted the format.
Customer Service Advisor, Webchat, Coquet Broadband

–

Gateshead

  • Answered webchat and email for a broadband provider, handling up to four chats at once on orders, faults, home moves and cancellations.
  • Kept response times inside the team target through the winter peak when chat volume almost doubled, and held a quality score above the team average every month.
  • Flagged a recurring router despatch error to operations, which cut the complaints the fault was causing.
Sales Assistant (part time), Hexham Road Garden Centre

–

Newcastle upon Tyne

  • Served customers on the till and answered the phone for bookings and plant queries at weekends while at sixth form.
  • Handled returns and complaints at the customer service desk without needing a supervisor.

Education

A levels in Business and Psychology; GCSEs including English (7) and Maths (6)

Wansbeck Sixth Form College, Ashington

Skills

  • Phone, webchat and email support
  • Complaint handling
  • Billing and payment plans
  • Vulnerable customer support
  • De-escalation
  • Zendesk
  • Salesforce Service Cloud
  • Knowledge base writing
  • Accurate note taking
  • Typing 65 wpm

Certifications

  • Level 2 Certificate in Customer Service, City & Guilds,

Start yours from this example

Opens this sample in the editor, in one of the templates below. Swap in your details, then tailor it to each vacancy in about two minutes.

Use this example

How a UK CV differs

In the UK the job is a Customer Service Advisor, not a Representative, and the place is a contact centre, with phone, webchat and email handled by the same team. Many of the biggest employers are regulated: banks and insurers under the FCA, energy and water under Ofgem and Ofwat, telecoms under Ofcom, each with complaint handling rules, an Ombudsman and a duty towards vulnerable customers that an advisor is trained on. The CV runs to two sides of A4 at most, usually one and a half for this role, with no photo and no date of birth. Large employers recruit in volume through online application forms with a short assessment, so the CV needs the advert's own words for the keyword match and whole-sentence bullets that paste into the form.

For a customer service advisor in the UK

  1. Advisor, contact centre, team leader

    Use the UK titles: Customer Service Advisor, Senior Advisor, Team Leader, and contact centre rather than call centre where the advert says so. Match the advert's own title in your headline.

  2. Regulated conversations and vulnerable customers

    If you have worked in energy, water, telecoms or financial services, say which regulator's rules you were trained on and name the vulnerability framework, such as the Priority Services Register. It moves you up the shortlist for any regulated employer.

  3. Complaints and the Ombudsman

    A complaint in the UK has a formal path to an Ombudsman. Advisors who have written final responses or handled stage-two complaints should say so; it is the step towards a senior post.

  4. GCSEs in English and maths

    Many contact centre adverts ask for GCSE grade 4 or above in English and maths. List them with the grades if you have them, and your A levels or BTEC if they are your highest qualification.

  5. Measures in the employer's language

    UK teams track CSAT, first contact resolution, quality scores and adherence. Use the names your employer used, and give your result as the team saw it rather than a vague above target.

Every CV in the UK

A4 paper
Set the page to A4, 210 by 297 millimetres. A Letter-sized PDF prints with odd margins on A4 and reads as imported from the US.
Two pages is normal
Most UK CVs run to two pages. One page suits a first job; three is rare and only for senior roles with a lot to show.
No photo, no date of birth
UK employers do not expect a photo, a date of birth, marital status or nationality on a CV, and most prefer not to see them.
Dates as DD/MM/YYYY
Day first where a full date appears, and month and year for each role: "Mar 2022 – Present". Never the US month-first order.
British English
Organise, programme, centre, licence, specialise. A CV in American spelling reads as written for somewhere else.
Town and postcode area, not a street address
A line such as "Manchester, M4" is enough. A full postal address, and the US-style "City, ST 12345" line, are not expected.

More on applying in the UK, with every CV example for it, on the UK page.

Templates for the customer service advisor CV

All templates

Every template exports on A4. The previews are drawn on Letter; the editor sets the page size when you export.

How the CV changes with experience

The same customer service advisor CV, written at three levels: a profile and three bullets for each.

Entry level

Zero to two years, or a first post in the title

Friendly, patient school leaver with two years of part-time retail and a Saturday job on a busy till, looking for a first contact centre post with full training.

  • Served customers at a busy till and handled returns and queries without a supervisor.
  • Answered the phone and took bookings for a family-run garden centre at weekends.
  • Pick up new systems quickly and hold GCSE grade 6 in English and maths.

Mid level

Three to seven years, owns a process or a workload

Customer support advisor with three years resolving software customer issues over webchat and email for a payroll provider.

  • Resolve 40 to 50 tickets a day for a cloud payroll product used by small businesses.
  • Keep customer satisfaction above the team target every quarter.
  • Write up bugs clearly for the product team and track them to a fix.

Senior

Eight years or more, leads people, budgets or programmes

Customer service team leader with nine years in contact centres, coaching a team of twelve, owning escalations and lifting quality scores across the floor.

  • Lead a team of twelve advisors, with weekly call listening and one-to-ones for coaching.
  • Improved the team's first contact resolution through targeted training on the ten most common contact reasons.
  • Handle the most complex complaints, including those heading for the Ombudsman, and write the final responses.

Skills to put on the customer service advisor CV

Hard skills

Multichannel support
Most contact centres run phone, webchat and email together, so naming the channels you work on shows where you can start.
Ticketing and CRM systems
Zendesk, Service Cloud and in-house systems are named in adverts, and experience with one shortens the training weeks.
Billing, payments and account knowledge
Most contacts are about money, and an advisor who gets the account right first time stops the repeat call.
Complaint handling under a regulator
Utilities, telecoms and financial services have complaint rules and an Ombudsman, and an advisor who knows them is trusted with escalations.
Knowledge base writing
Articles that cut contacts are a result a team leader can measure, and show you think beyond the queue.

Soft skills

Empathy
Customers calm down when they feel heard, and that makes every resolution quicker.
De-escalation
Handling an angry caller well protects the customer, the company and your own shift.
Clear, plain English
Simple explanations prevent the follow-up contact, which is the measure team leaders watch.
Resilience
A full day of difficult conversations takes steadiness, and interviewers ask how you look after it.

Mistakes that cost customer service advisor interviews

  1. No measures

    Customer service is measured closely in every UK contact centre. Include your satisfaction score, first contact resolution, quality score or contacts a day where you have them, and say which the team tracked.

  2. Personality traits instead of evidence

    Patient and friendly is assumed. Show it through results: escalations you closed, a complaint you turned into a retained customer, a payment plan that kept someone supplied.

  3. Systems left out

    Adverts name Zendesk, Service Cloud, Genesys or an in-house system. List the ones you use so the keyword match finds them and the team leader knows how long your training will take.

  4. Hiding the extra responsibilities

    Buddying new starters, taking escalations, writing articles and covering the team leader's rota show you are ready for a senior post. Give each a bullet with a result.

  5. A US-style single page with a street address

    A one-page document with a full address, a representative title and the spelling of a different country reads as borrowed. Use Advisor, a town and postcode area, and British spelling.

Questions about the customer service advisor CV

What should a Customer Service Advisor CV include?

The channels you work on, contacts a day, your measures, the systems you use, any regulated or complaint handling experience, your GCSEs in English and maths, and the extra responsibilities you have taken on.

How do I write a customer service CV with no experience?

Use any job or activity where you dealt with the public: retail, hospitality, volunteering, a school reception rota. Give one example of a difficult customer handled well and name the systems you have used, even a till.

Which measures should I put on the CV?

Customer satisfaction, first contact resolution, quality scores, contacts a day and adherence. Use the ones your team tracked and give your own result rather than the team's.

How long should the CV be?

One to two sides of A4. One side suits a first contact centre post; two sides are right once you have escalations, projects and more than one employer to show.

How do I move from advisor to team leader?

Show escalations, buddying, quality calibrations and process fixes you drove. Those lead to senior advisor, quality and team leader posts, and the CV should give each one a bullet with a result.

How do I tailor the CV for an online application form?

Use the advert's own words for the channels and measures, keep every bullet a whole sentence, and move the most relevant role to the top. Resume Master rewrites the CV against a pasted advert in about two minutes, which is handy when you are applying to several employers a week.

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