A customer service assessment test is a pre-employment check used when hiring for customer-facing roles, including call centre and retail positions. It typically combines communication, comprehension and problem-solving questions with a personality assessment. Practising these tests beforehand is the most reliable way to prepare.
If you have applied for a role within a customer service division, then we can help you prepare for the selection process. Find out about the types of aptitude tests used for this type of role, and use our practice packages to help you perform well in your assessment.
Finding out which tests your employer sets is the single most useful thing you can do before practising. There is a free sample question below.
Which tests you sit depends on the employer. These are the things worth doing whichever ones you are set.
Get to know the format of customer service aptitude tests by previewing what you can expect. At Practice Aptitude Tests, you’ll find examples that show the style of questioning and the types of scenarios you’ll be tested on. Understanding the test layout and type of questions in advance can greatly reduce test-day anxiety and help you perform at your best.
Creating an environment similar to the actual test setting can work wonders. Find a quiet place, set a timer, and take practice tests as if it’s the real deal. This method helps improve your time management skills and ensures you are comfortable and less stressed when taking the official test.
After completing each practice test at Practice Aptitude Tests, spend time reviewing your answers, particularly the ones you got wrong. Understanding your mistakes is a pivotal step toward improvement. Reflecting on your results will help you learn and remember the right approach for future tests.
Identify the areas where you have room for improvement and make them your focus during your practice sessions. Use the tailored practice exams available to hone in on these weak spots. Consistent practice in areas that challenge you will build your confidence and skills, leading to better overall performance.
A positive attitude and a relaxed mind can impact your performance significantly. Create a study schedule that allows for adequate rest and free time. This balance ensures that you’re well-rested and in the right mindset when you sit down to take both practice and actual customer service aptitude tests.
This is the style of question our Customer Service tests use. Pick an answer to see how you did.
Practice moves scores fastest on the tests set under time pressure, and every question in the pack comes with the working shown.
A customer service assessment test is a screening assessment that identifies candidates with the skills needed to work well with customers. Most versions assess communication, comprehension, logic, and personality traits.
Customer service teams are essential in providing excellent customer service and customer satisfaction. To be successful in this type of role, there are skills and behavioural traits that an employer can assess to accurately predict how well employees will perform in a customer service role.
While experience is valuable in customer facing roles, using aptitude tests focused on the skills needed for excellent customer service are an effective way to assess someone’s skills and potential. This is especially helpful when recruiting for a role that garners a lot of competition between similarly qualified candidates, since the tests give more data that employers can use to rank applicants.
Customer service roles also require a certain kind of person who has the right kind of temperament and interpersonal skills; without significant time spent with someone, it is hard to gauge these during the recruitment process.
By using customer service skill tests that include sections like a personality test, employers can get a more accurate understanding of you as a person and whether you will be a good fit for the company in a less time-intensive way.
While customer service roles do not typically require specific technical skills and qualifications, there are still traits required to thrive in this sector. These are just a few of the most important ones that employers will look for when you apply for these roles:
The first skill is one of the most important: strong communication. While this is vital for any job, customer service is almost entirely about working directly with customers and clients, such as on the shop floor, when answering on the phone and dealing with customer support queries.
As a customer service assistant, you are the main representative of the company to the public, and therefore you must be able to communicate professionally in all kinds of situations.
Related to your communication skills is your comprehension ability, which is how well you process and relay information. General reading and writing skills are essential to everyday life, but working in customer service means processing a lot more information than most on a daily basis, so you need to show that you are capable of this.
In customer service roles, you typically deal with customers and their issues immediately, meaning that unexpected situations occur suddenly and can require you to make quick decisions.
While you may not always be able to solve an issue on the spot, showing that you follow a logical process and understand how to make the most progress you can at the time is a vital workplace skill.
Roles like customer care representatives and customer support agents will need excellent problem solving skills since their interactions with customers are continuous and require immediate action.
Adaptability is hugely important when working with people, as you have to be able to deal with any situation that is put in front of you. Customer service is a fast-paced sector and often no two days are the same, so being open to change in routine and taking on varied tasks is part of the job.
When dealing directly with customers your ability to come across as friendly and empathic will have a big effect on how well you are received. Depending on the industry that you work in, you may be dealing with something very personal to your customers and have to be understanding of every single person’s situation. Being empathetic will ensure you receive positive customer feedback.
When things get busy, customer service roles like retail can be stressful environments to function in. The ability to keep calm and professional under pressure is important to keep things moving, and make sure that you still provide the quality of service that the customers expect from the company.
There are a number of tests that are used to assess your skills and cognitive abilities. Aptitude tests give recruiters objective data that they can use to compare candidates: therefore, your score on these tests will have a big influence on whether or not you get hired.
For the more subjective tests like personality assessments, they are typically measured against the answers of current employees and the company’s ethics and values, to show how closely you align.
In order to test your communication skills, including general literacy and comprehension skills, you may be asked to complete a written task. There are a few different kinds of written exercises that are used for different types of jobs, but the most common are writing a formal letter, an email, or proofreading a piece of text.
By doing this, employers can see your communication style, your level of grammar and spelling, and how well you understand context and tone when communicating.
A verbal reasoning test differs from a writing task because it does not ask you to craft anything, but instead focuses on your comprehension and logic skills.
The typical verbal reasoning question will present you with a passage of text and then you will be asked to answer questions based on the information given, usually in the style of true/false/cannot say, which show how well you filter key information and follow a logical process.
Many of the skills that employers are looking for when it comes to customer service are best gauged through a situational judgement test. Here you will be presented with work-related scenarios and asked to pick or rank responses according to what you think is most appropriate to the situation.
This can give a very accurate insight into your working style; for example if you are confrontational or how well you work in a team.
Personality tests are the aptitude test that most people are familiar with. They are a broader and more in-depth look into your behaviour than situational judgement tests, which give you limited parameters in which to answer.
A personality test can assess all kinds of aspects that are much harder to gauge during the limited contact of the recruitment process such as: your working style, how you build relationships, your values and ethics, how you see yourself, etc.
To assess how you might perform when actually on the job, employers like to use an e-tray exercise to simulate real-life working scenarios. You will be given a selection of different tasks that might be expected of you during an average day and then assessed on how well you deal with the workload.
This means it is not just about doing the tasks well, but also showing that you understand how to prioritise tasks, manage your time, and perform under pressure.
While this is always important, it can be particularly helpful when applying for customer service positions, since you are expected to be the face of the company and are often the only representative that a customer will talk to. Make sure to research how the company operates, so you can learn what kind of service style it looks for on the situational judgement and personality tests, which are where you will show if you are a good cultural fit.
More subjective aptitude tests like personality and situational judgement tests can feel daunting, as they do not have right or wrong answers. However, by taking personality tests beforehand you can get an understanding for the answers you naturally gravitate towards and what kind of results you get.
One of the most difficult aspects of test-taking is the time pressure, so it is very important to get used to performing well under timed conditions. Try to complete as many practice assessments under exam conditions as possible, to show how well you work in stressful situations.
A key part of customer service is confidence in your skills - you will likely be dealing with a range of different scenarios such as angry customers, customer support queries and customer complaints. You’ll need to be confident for taking the test as well. Trust your experience and knowledge to show that you understand expectations and have the skills needed to excel in the role.
Exceptional customer service skills are critical to being successful. Gaining customer loyalty and serving people to the best of your ability means you have to be customer obsessed. Approaching the exam within mindset can help with the answers you select.
What candidates ask us most often
A customer service test can include a wide variety of questions from all kinds of aptitude tests like verbal, personality and situational, so be prepared for this. The best way to prepare for any test is to practice; you can do practice customer service tests, but it is also a good idea to identify your weakest area and focus on that to potentially improve your score the most.
It is a misconception that customer service is unskilled labor. It actually requires a number of skills that not everyone possesses. The main skills sought after in customer service assistants are:
Make sure that you are prepared by doing practice tests beforehand. Our resources page has loads of information about all the different kinds of aptitude tests and how best to prepare for them, so take a look through to find helpful tips and tricksthat can help you to pass.
This is highly dependent on the sector that you are applying for, so the first thing to do is to make sure that you know the job and person specification in detail. For tests such as the situational judgement one, the questions will most likely ask you to respond to potential problems you might face such as:
You can also try and find out the specific test publisher that the company uses for their tests, in which case you might be able to find their practice papers and get a better idea of how they typically structure their tests.
Rated 5.0 out of 5 across 47 reviews. A selection:
What I liked was the opportunity to test my quantitative analysis skills and to learn more about industry market trends. I didn't quite like the need to make quick and rough calculations for the designated time limit. Anyway, it was nice to have a try.
I liked it a lot because I like the challenges but I do consider that calculations had to be done to know the exact values and there was not enough time (that dislikes to me) but I had to use logic to be able to answer
This test utilized a lot of math and analytics skills. I thought it would be more about people skills.
Our practice tests mirror the formats used in Customer Service hiring. They are written by Practice Aptitude Tests and are not affiliated with or endorsed by any individual employer.
Take a free test in any format, then upgrade when you know which one you need.
