What Employers Actually Ask For in Customer Support Jobs Across Europe

Customer support job ads look similar on the surface everywhere in Europe: friendly tone, problem-solving, maybe a language or two. But when you look at what employers actually list as required skills on NewLuxJob's own customer support postings, the priorities differ a lot by country. Here is what the numbers show, country by country.

Communication is the most requested skill almost everywhere

Across nearly every country in NewLuxJob's customer support listings, "communication" is either the top skill or close to it. In Portugal, 94% of customer support postings (out of 79) list communication as a requirement, the highest share of any country covered. Belgium and Ireland are close behind at 83% (out of 820 and 163 postings respectively), followed by the Netherlands at 79% (out of 522), Sweden at 76% (out of 438), and Italy at 58% (out of 125). Germany, with 67% (out of 1,025 postings), and France, with 51% (out of 698), still rank it highly, though not as the single dominant skill. Spain sits at 52% (out of 393) and Poland at 50% (out of 313).

Language requirements vary sharply by country

Language is where the biggest country-to-country differences show up. In Germany, German is the single most requested skill, appearing in 75% of customer support postings, ahead of communication at 67% and English at 65%. Luxembourg shows a similar pattern, with German required in 69% of postings, communication in 60%, and English in 38%.

Portugal stands out for English: 73% of its customer support postings ask for it, the highest English requirement among the countries covered, well above the 65% seen in Germany or the 54% in France. Ireland, by contrast, lists English in just 29% of postings, likely because it is assumed rather than stated as a distinct requirement. Poland's postings ask for English in 38% of cases and German in 12%. In Belgium and the Netherlands, English appears far less often as a listed skill, at 15% and 17% respectively, with German mentioned in only 4% and 5% of postings.

Software and process skills: CRM, ticketing and troubleshooting

Beyond language and communication, employers list a recurring set of tools and process skills. CRM appears across most markets: 39% of Spanish postings (out of 393) mention it, alongside 34% in Italy (out of 125), 28% in Poland (out of 313), and 17% in the Netherlands (out of 522).

Troubleshooting is especially prominent in Spain, listed in 40% of postings, and in Poland at 28%. Italy and Ireland list it in 26% of postings each. Ticketing shows up more specifically in France, at 15% of postings, and Germany, at 14%.

Named platforms appear less often but still show up in the data: Salesforce is listed in 7% of Swedish postings and 4% of Luxembourg postings, while Zendesk and Jira each appear in 6% and 11% of postings in Ireland and Poland respectively. Live chat skills are requested in 16% of Spanish postings and 11% of Italian postings, with smaller shares in the Netherlands (4%) and Portugal (6%).

SLA and process knowledge appear in a minority of postings

Service-level agreement (SLA) knowledge is a more niche requirement. It shows up in 8% of French customer support postings and 4% of Swedish ones, the only two countries in this dataset where SLA appears as a distinct listed skill.

What this means for job seekers

The pattern across these 11 countries, covering everything from 79 postings in Portugal to 1,025 in Germany, is that communication and language requirements dominate, while specific software skills like CRM, ticketing or troubleshooting are listed less consistently and vary more by market. If you are applying for a customer support role in Germany or Luxembourg, German language ability is listed as a requirement more often than any single tool. In Portugal, English is the standout language requirement. In Spain and Poland, troubleshooting and CRM experience appear more frequently than in Belgium or the Netherlands, where communication skills dominate the listed requirements by a wide margin.