Abstract The CROSS experiment is proposing to use a new technology of surface sensitive bolometers for low-background neutrinoless double beta decay searches. Efficient rejection of surface α and β events will allow to reach background in the region of interest below than 10 −4 cnts/keV/kg/yr. The isotopes of interest, which are 130 Te and 100 Mo, are investigated with TeO 2 and Li 2 MoO 4 bolometers. The surface sensitivity is achieved thanks to the evaporation of thin metallic film on the crystal surface that modifies the pulse shape of near-surface events. An investigation of various pulse shape parameters was performed. The analysis shows that one of the best parameters for discrimination is the integrated area of the raw signal both for TeO 2 and Li 2 MoO 4 with Pd-Al (10 nm - 100 nm) bi-layer.