Specification

You must:

• be 16 or over
• not already be in full-time education
• live in England to qualify for Didac funded apprenticeships

You can start an apprenticeship whether you’re starting your career, want a change or you’re upskilling in your current job. You can have a previous qualification like a degree and still start an apprenticeship.

As an apprentice you’ll:

• learn and train for a specific job
• get paid and receive holiday leave
• get hands-on experience in a real job
• be given the opportunity to improve your maths and English skills
• study for at least 20% of your working hours off-the-job
• complete assessments during and at the end of your apprenticeship
• be on a career path with lots of future potential

The apprenticeship will help you develop your knowledge and skills in the following areas

Knowledge

• Knowing your customers
• Understanding the organisation you work for
• Meeting regulations and legislation in your sector
• Systems and resources
• Your role and responsibility
• Customer experience
• Product and service knowledge

Skills

• Interpersonal skills
• Communication
• Influencing skills
• Personal organisation
• Dealing with customer conflict and challenge

The apprenticeship will help you develop the following behaviours

Developing self

• Take ownership for keeping your service knowledge and skills up-to-date.
• Consider personal goals and propose development that would help achieve them.

Being open to feedback

• Act on and seek feedback from others to develop or maintain personal service skills and knowledge.

Team working

• Frequently and consistently communicate and work with others in the interest of helping customers efficiently.
• Share personal learning and case studies with others, presenting recommendations, and improvement to support good practice.

Equality – treating all customers as individuals

• Treat customers as individuals to provide a personalised customer service experience.
• Uphold the organisations core values and service culture through your actions.

Presentation – dress code, professional language

• Demonstrate personal pride in the job through appropriate dress and positive and confident language.

“Right first time”

• Use communication behaviours that establish clearly what each customer requires and manage their expectations.

Take ownership from the first contact and then take responsibility for fulfilling your promise.

The customer service apprenticeship is a gateway to a career in wide variety of customer facing roles including sales, marketing, procurement and management.  If you are promoted to run a team for example you could go on to do another apprenticeship such as Team Leader at level 3, which equivalent to an A’ Level.