Duration of apprenticeship
15 Months
Apprenticeship overview
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. You gather and analyse data and customer information that influences change and improvements in service. Utilising both organisational and generic IT systems to carry out your role with an awareness of other digital technologies. This could be in many types of environment including contact centres, retail, webchat, service industry or any customer service point.
Entry requirements
Individuals with more advanced inter- personal skills, experience of working with customers in some capacity. Candidates will be required to undertake initial assessments in maths and english and achieve a level 1 outcome on their initial assessment results.
Functional skills
All apprentices will need to undertake functional skills in maths & english at level 2 as a mandatory part of their apprenticeship and must do so before taking the end-point assessment. Candidates who have achieved GCSE’s or A levels in maths & english A-C will be exempt from having to complete their functional skills with valid proof of their exemption certificates.
Industry qualification
Apprentices will study l3 diploma for customer service specialist as part of their on-programme training and assessment.
Progression Opportunities
Completion of this apprenticeship standard will lead to eligibility to join the institute of Customer Service as an individual member at a professional level. Should you choose to progress on a customer service career path, you may be eligible for further professional membership including management.
Programme Overview
Apprentices will learn new skills, knowledge and behaviours as part of their job role. Apprentices will benefit from teaching and learning on the job putting their skills into practice. Additionally, apprentices will undertake off the job learning activities and other work-based duties which will contribute to successful completion of their apprenticeship programme. Apprentices will receive regular visits from their training assessors and have access to learning resources to support their learning and development on and off the job.