12 months.
Upon successful completion of this apprenticeship, the apprentice will be awarded the following:
• Level 2 Diploma in Customer Service
• Customer Service Practitioner Practitioner Standards
• Functional Skills in Maths and English Level 1 (if applicable)
The role of a customer service practitioner is to deliver high quality products and services to the customers of their organisation. Your core responsibility will be to provide a high quality service to customers which will be delivered from the workplace, digitally, or through going out into the customer’s own locality. These may be one-off or routine contacts and include dealing with orders, payments, offering advice, guidance and support, meet-and-greet, sales, fixing problems, after care, service recovery or gaining insight through measuring customer satisfaction. You may be the first point of contact and work in any sector or organisation type.
Your actions will influence the customer experience and their satisfaction with your organisation. You will demonstrate excellent customer service skills and behaviours as well as product and/or service knowledge when delivering to your customers. You provide service in line with the organisation’s customer service standards and strategy and within appropriate regulatory requirements. Your customer interactions may cover a wide range of situations and can include; face-to-face, telephone, post, email, text and social media.
The apprentice will be expected to complete the 2 mandatory diploma units below:
• Delivery of Effective Customer Service
• Supporting the customer service environment
This qualification is suitable for anyone working in a customer service position, who are working on complex tasks with some degree of decision-making within their job role.
Completion of this apprenticeship will lead to eligibility to join the Institute of Customer Service as an Individual member at Professional level. Should you choose to progress on a customer service career path, you may be eligible for further professional membership including management.
The apprentice must be aged 16 years or over, living in England and not in a full-time education. The apprentice will be required to undertake a DBS check, must be employed and working more than 16 hours per week.
It is compulsory for the apprentice to spent 20% of their normal working hours on training. The training can happen every week, every month or in a separate block of time. The training can take place at the workplace, training provider or online.
Employers who do not pay levy: For apprenticeships that start from 1 April 2021, the rate of co-investment is 5% of the total price of the apprentice’s training, with the government covering the remaining 95% of the cost, up to the funding band maximum.
Employers with fewer than 50 people working for them are able to train, at no cost, apprentices aged 16-18 or aged 19-24 who have previously been in care or who have a Local Authority Education, Health and Care plan. These employers are not required to contribute the 5% co-investment; instead, the government will pay 100% of the training costs for these individuals up to the
funding band maximum.
Employers who pay levy: All funds that appear in the apprenticeship service accounts of employers who pay the levy expire 24 months after they appear in the account, if not already spent. Please contact us to discuss your apprenticeship strategies.
Learner Loan: Qualifications higher than Level 2 can also be funded via the Government Advanced Learner Loan.
You can apply for this apprenticeship at any time of the year provided you meet the entry requirements.
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