How to Answer: Amazon Virtual Customer Service Associates must be adept in conflict resolution, negotiation, and de-escalation skills. Talk about your dispute resolution abilities.
Advice and answer examples written specifically for an Amazon job interview.
5. Amazon Virtual Customer Service Associates must be adept in conflict resolution, negotiation, and de-escalation skills. Talk about your dispute resolution abilities.
How to Answer
Amazon expects that as a Virtual Customer Service Associate, you will demonstrate an ability to resolve challenging customer issues, only escalating them to your management team when necessary. The interviewer wants to see that you can approach problems logically and rationally while maintaining composure in highly escalated situations.
To give the interviewer an in-depth idea of your dispute resolution abilities, consider telling a story based on a real-life example. If you have work experience, this example can come from your current or previous positions. If you are new to your career, consider drawing an example from your education, volunteer work, or team sports.
Your story must be clear, engaging, and easy for the interviewer to follow. To achieve this, consider using the STAR method to form your response. STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action, Result.
- Situation: Set the stage with the background information the interviewer needs to make sense of your story.
- Task: Give the interviewer an idea of your role and responsibilities in this specific story.
- Action: Offer a detailed description of the action steps you took to help the situation.
- Result: Talk about the specific achievements and outcomes that resulted from your actions.
Answer Example
"When there is conflict, I will address the issue right away to avoid the conflict from escalating. I must listen to the problem and hear the person out entirely before trying to approach a solution. I believe in allowing people to have their say, and then we work together to create a solution that will serve everyone. (Situation) For instance, last week, an irate customer called me regarding a glitch in our software product. (Task) I am accountable for the satisfaction of all customers on my account list, and I am trained to perform basic tech support. This accountability means that I only escalate the situation to tech support after running through multiple troubleshooting activities. (Action) I listened to the customer and kindly reminded them that I was there to help them until they were 100% satisfied. I asked numerous questions to understand the problem fully and made suggestions to fix the concern only when I understood the core issue. (Result) With this approach, I was able to de-escalate the customer's anger very quickly. In the end, they were relieved and grateful that I took the time to listen and troubleshoot the issue. I believe that most customer complaints come to a resolution through a gentle and collaborative approach."