Interview questions › Spotting and solving problems
Tell me about a difficult customer or client situation and how you resolved it.
Spotting and solving problems · commonly asked in support, sales, any
No account, no credit card for the first three questions.
How to answer it well
Separate the two jobs: fix the immediate problem for this person, then stop the same thing happening for others.
Two mistakes that cost you points
- Only describing the apology and the refund.
- Making the customer sound unreasonable with no role for your process.
What to do with this question today
- Answer it out loud once, without stopping. Do not write it down first.
- Read back exactly what you said. Mark the filler words, and the length of your longest pause.
- Answer it again and change one thing — usually the opening line, or the number at the end.
This question is not in the free run yet — practise the same skill with a free run, or paste a job description and we build the set around that role.
More questions
- Tell me about a time you spotted a problem other people had missed, and came up with a fix. · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a time you had to find the real cause of a recurring problem, not just the symptom. · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a decision you made using data. What did you measure, and what did it change? · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a time you found a quality problem in your own work or your team's work. What did you do? · Spotting and solving problems
- In one minute, introduce yourself and explain why this role should consider you. · Communication
- Walk me through your resume. Tell me about the choices you made along the way. · Communication
Also searched as: tell me about a difficult customer situation; customer complaint handling interview answer
Dimension: Spotting and solving problems — the same skill is probed again with different wording, so practise the pattern, not just this sentence.