Apprenticeships
Customer Service Specialist
Level 3
This Apprenticeship provides the breadth and depth of skills and knowledge needed for employment in Customer Service.
Qualification
Customer Service Specialist
Qualification Level
Level 3
End Point Assessment Centre
DSW
Instruction Language
English
Qualification Duration
12-18 Months
Included in
Our Green Skills Pathway
Employer Funding & Incentives
Funding
As of the 18th March 2024 the government announced significant changes to apprenticeship funding, aimed at supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their hiring of young apprentices. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled plans to eliminate SME co-investment payments for apprentices under the age of 22, alongside increasing the transfer limit of apprenticeship levy funds from 25% to 50%.
Incentives
Employers could get £1,000 each for taking on an apprentice who is either:
- aged 16 to 18 years old, or
- aged 19 to 25 years old and has an education, health and care (EHCP) plan or has been in the care of their local authority
What you can use the payment for
The payment is different to apprenticeship levy funds, so you can spend it on anything to support your organisation’s costs. For example, on uniforms, your apprentice’s travel or their salary. You do not have to pay it back.
Included in the Green Skills Pathway…
As part of our commitment to the environment, we are proud to offer an exciting opportunity for our apprentices. With every apprenticeship, learners will receive full funding to study our level 2 sustainability and environmental awareness short course, completely free of charge! Discover more about this fantastic course by clicking here.
To read the full Apprenticeship Standard: Click here
Who is this course suitable for?
The main purpose of a customer service specialist is to be a ‘professional’ for direct customer support within all sectors and organisation types. You are an advocate of Customer Service who acts as a referral point for dealing with more complex or technical customer requests, complaints, and queries. You are often an escalation point for complicated or ongoing customer problems. As an expert in your organisation’s products and/or services, you share knowledge with your wider team and colleagues.
Job titles
- Customer Service Specialist
- Client Support Advisor
- Customer Relations Executive
Occupational duties :
Guide and support team members to ensure a high standard of customer service.
Act as a mentor to colleagues, sharing best practices and insights.
- Implement digital tools to enhance efficiency and customer interactions.
Gather and evaluate customer service data to track performance and identify trends.
Use insights to drive improvements in service delivery and customer experience.
Oversee customer service initiatives, ensuring they align with budget and resource availability.
Implement continuous improvements to enhance service quality and efficiency.
Develop and implement resource plans that meet current and future organisational needs.
Assess the impact of changes and adjust resource allocation accordingly.
Ensure all customer service activities adhere to relevant legal and regulatory requirements.
Keep up to date with changes in industry legislation and implement necessary adjustments.
Assess team skills and create development plans to support career growth.
Provide opportunities for ongoing learning and professional development.
Work with colleagues across different departments to improve service efficiency.
Share insights and feedback to enhance teamwork and organisational success.
Behaviours
These are the personal attributes and behaviours expected of all Customer Service Specialists carrying out their roles
Develop self
- Proactively keep your service, industry and best practice knowledge and skills up-to-date
- Consider personal goals related to service and take action towards achieving them
Ownership/ Responsibility
- Personally commit to and take ownership for actions to resolve customer issues to the satisfaction of the customer and your organisation
- Exercises proactivity and creativity when identifying solutions to customer and organisational issues
- Make realistic promises and deliver on them
Team working
- Work effectively and collaboratively with colleagues at all levels to achieve results.
- Recognise colleagues as internal customers
- Share knowledge and experience with others to support colleague development
Equality
- Adopt a positive and enthusiastic attitude being open minded and able to tailor your service to each customer
- Be adaptable and flexible to your customer needs whilst continuing to work within the agreed customer service environment
Presentation
- Demonstrate brand advocacy, values and belief when dealing with customer requests to build trust, credibility and satisfaction
- Ensure your personal presentation, in all forms of communication, reflects positively on your organisation’s brand
Course Costs
This course is funded by the UK Government. The value of this training is:
£4,000.00
Employer 5% contribution
£200
End Point Assessment Cost (Paid by Kiwi)
£TBC
96
Students saved up to 50% on their fees
96 Students saved up to 50% on their fees
Course content
OCCUPATIONAL BRIEF OF STANDARD
KNOWLEDGE
Business Knowledge and Understanding
- Understand what continuous improvement means in a service environment and how your recommendations for change impact your organisation
- Understand the impact your service provision has on the wider organisation and the value it adds
- Understand your organisation’s current business strategy in relation to customers and make recommendations for its future
- Understand the principles and benefits of being able to think about the future when taking action or making service related decisions
- Understand a range of leadership styles and apply them successfully in a customer service environment
Customer Journey knowledge
- Understand and critically evaluate the possible journeys of your customers, including challenges and the end-to-end experience
- Understand the reasons why customer issues and complex situations sometimes need referral or escalation for specialist attention
- Understand the underpinning business processes that support you in bringing about the best outcome for customers and your organisation
- Understand commercial factors and authority limits for delivering the required customer experience
Knowing your customers and their needs/ Customer Insight
- Know your internal and external customers and how their behaviour may require different approaches from you
- Understand how to analyse, use and present a range of information to provide customer insight
- Understand what drives loyalty, retention and satisfaction and how they impact on your organisation
- Understand different customer types and the role of emotions in bringing about a successful outcome
- Understand how customer expectations can differ between cultures, ages and social profiles
Customer service culture and environment awareness
- Keep current, knowledge and understanding of regulatory considerations, drivers and impacts in relation to how you deliver for customers
- Understand your business environment and culture and the position of customer service within it
- Understand your organisation structure and what role each department needs to play in delivering Customer Service and what the consequences are should things go wrong
- Understand how to find and use industry best practice to enhance your own knowledge
SKILLS
Business-focused service delivery
- Demonstrate a continuous improvement and future focussed approach to customer service delivery including decision making and providing recommendations or advice
- Resolve complex issues by being able to choose from and successfully apply a wide range of approaches
- Find solutions that meet your organisations needs as well as the customer requirements
Providing a positive customer experience
- Through advanced questioning, listening and summarising negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes
Providing a positive customer experience
- Manage challenging and complicated situations within your level of authority and make recommendations to enable and deliver change to service or strategy
- Use clear explanations, provide options and solutions to influence and help customers make choices and agree next steps
- Explore and interpret the customer experience to inform and influence achieving a positive result for customer satisfaction
- Demonstrate a cost conscious mind-set when meeting customer and the business needs
- Identifying where highs and lows of the customer journey produce a range of emotions in the customer
- Use written and verbal communication to simplify and provide complex information in a way that supports positive customer outcome in the relevant format
Working with your customers / customer insights
- Proactively gather customer feedback, through a variety of methods. Critically analyse, and evaluate the meaning, implication and facts and act upon it
- Analyse your customer types, to identify or anticipate their potential needs and expectations when providing your service
Customer service performance
- Maintain a positive relationship even when you are unable to deliver the customer’s expected outcome
- When managing referrals or escalations take into account historical interactions and challenges to determine next steps
Service improvement
- Analyse the end to end service experience, seeking input from others where required, supporting development of solutions
- Make recommendations based on your findings to enable improvement
- Make recommendations and implement where possible, changes in line with new and relevant legislation, regulations and industry best practice
Enrol and pay now
This course is funded by the UK Government. The value of this training is:
£4,000.00
Employer 5% contribution
£200
End Point Assessment Cost (Paid by Kiwi)
£TBC
Any Questions
Contact us today
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