Role-specific Customer Complaint Officer Interview Questions & Answers:

1. How to manage time and priorities?

Here your potential employer wants to know that you are capable of organising yourself properly and ensuring that nothing gets forgotten.

Do you keep a diary? Use Google Calender? Write daily to-do lists? Use wall planners to keep track of out-of-office appointments? Whatever you do, now is your opportunity to tell them!

2. How to measure the success of your incentives?

An ideal answer to this question will demonstrate that you are capable of monitoring a situation as it evolves.

For example:

Whilst working in a call centre as a supervisor, I introduced 'Sugar Fridays' - giving my team sweets and treats to get them through the Friday slog.

Prior to introducing the incentive, I compiled a backlog of sales figures from previous Fridays. I then introduced the incentive on a trial period, continued collecting data and cross-compared the results. There was an obvious peak in sales figures and so the incentive became permanent.

3. How to keep yourself motivated?

This is your opportunity to tell your potential employer what keeps you focused. Possible answers include:

• Breaking your workload up into daily or hourly targets to ensure that the next small success is never too far away.
• Living a healthy life-style. Eating the right foods and drinking lots of water in the office can have a big impact on your concentration levels.
• Motivating others and promoting a positive atmosphere in the office.

4. How to manage your time and objectives in your role?

This is your opportunity to assure your potential employer that you are capable of working in line with your objectives and getting the job done on time.

For example:

In my current role, I break down my objectives into daily targets and outline periods of the day when I am going to focus on achieving them. I find this system works well for me and I expect to carry it into my next job.

5. Tell me how did you recognize the level of trust or respect your team held for you and how did you ensure this continued?

Only you will know if your team really trusts and respects you. Respectful employees will usually make you coffee, hold a door open for you, properly carry out tasks assigned to them and rarely undermine your judgement.

To maintain this level of respect, you should make time to recognise your employees' efforts, occasionally explain how you reached a solution to a problem (this can help with buy-in for larger changes or projects) and do your best to be consistently level-headed and successful in your judgement - as it only takes one slip-up to undermine your credibility.

6. Explain a situation in which you inspired trust and respect in your team?

It's important to think of and talk about a situation that's relevant for the position you're interviewing for. Ideally this will have had a positive outcome. By doing this you will help the interviewers to understand why you are a great fit for their team.

7. How to ensure that your department's goals are in line with the overall company goals?

This question helps your interviewer to gauge whether you understand your role in your current job, and how your efforts contribute to the goals of the organisation.

For example:

The company I currently work for publishes an annual report of KPIs relating to the goals they hope to achieve that year. I extract the company goals that are relevant to my department and break them down into weekly objectives. I then use these objectives to ensure that my team is constantly contributing to the overall goals of the organisation.

8. Can you please explain your current targets and KPIs - How do you ensure you achieve these?

Here your interviewer is checking that you are capable of working consistently towards your targets.

In an ideal answer you will outline what your current targets are, then follow this up with a discussion about how you break these targets down into weekly objectives to ensure that you are consistently working towards your annual goals.

9. Explain an occasion when you had to analyse a large amount of complex information which led to you identifying an improvement in service delivery or cost?

Here your interviewer is testing your ability to analyse data. An ideal answer will clearly outline the problem you were faced with, the information you extracted from the data and the changes you subsequently made to improve.

For example:

Problem: The appliance-delivery company I work for was getting consistently low ratings on its delivery service.

Action: I looked at all of the online feedback forms and personally phoned customers who had rated our service 0.

Findings: I found that the majority of our unhappy customers hated waiting in all day for their items to be delivered.

Solution: I piloted a new system where the delivery driver phoned the customer an hour before their item was due to be delivered. This stopped our customers from having to hang around the house all day waiting for their delivery.

Outcome: During the trial period, we saw a marked increase in our customer satisfaction ratings and the new system soon became standard practice.

10. How to recognise the level of trust or respect your team held for you and how did you ensure this continued?

Only you will know if your team really trusts and respects you. Respectful employees will usually make you coffee, hold a door open for you, properly carry out tasks assigned to them and rarely undermine your judgement.

To maintain this level of respect, you should make time to recognise your employees' efforts, occasionally explain how you reached a solution to a problem (this can help with buy-in for larger changes or projects) and do your best to be consistently level-headed and successful in your judgement - as it only takes one slip-up to undermine your credibility.