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Customer Service Practitioner Apprenticeship Level 2

designed for individuals who are interested in working in a customer-facing role, such as in retail, hospitality, or call center industries. The apprenticeship is designed to develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are required to provide high-quality customer service.

“Providing customer service products and services for businesses and other organisations including face-to-face, telephone, digital and written contact and communications.”

What is it about?
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.

Responsibilities
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..

Funding
This apprenticeship standard has been allocated a maximum funding cap of £3,500 which is the anticipated full cost for delivering this standard and the end point assessment.

Knowledge, Skills & Behaviours (KSBs)

KSBs are the core attributes that you must have as an apprentice in order to be competent in the occupation that you’re working in. They sit alongside your technical studies and exams and are the main assessment methods used in an end point assessment (EPA). Think of it like the soft skills you see in the workplace.

  • Knowledge – the information, technical detail, and ‘know-how’ that someone needs to have and understand to successfully carry out the duties. Some knowledge will be occupation-specific, whereas some may be more generic.
  • Skills – the practical application of knowledge needed to successfully undertake the duties. They are learnt through on- and/or off-the-job training or experience.
  • Behaviours – mindsets, attitudes or approaches needed for competence. Whilst these can be innate or instinctive, they can also be learnt. Behaviours tend to be very transferable. They may be more similar across occupations than knowledge and skills. For example, team worker, adaptable and professional.

Knowledge

  • Knowing your customers 
  • Understanding the organisation
  • Meeting regulations and legislation
  • Systems and resources
  • Your role and responsibility
  • Customer experience
  • Communication
  • Product and service knowledge

Skills

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

Behaviours

  • Developing self
  • Being open to feedback
  • Team working
  • Equality – treating all customers as individuals
  • Presentation – dress code, professional language
  • “Right first time”

Skills an apprentice will learn

  • Use a range of questioning skills, including listening and responding in a way that builds rapport, determines customer needs and expectations and achieves positive engagement and delivery.
  • Depending on your job role and work environment:
  • Use appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication skills, along with summarising language during face-to-face communications; and/or
  • Use appropriate communication skills, along with reinforcement techniques (to confirm understanding) during non-facing customer interactions.
  • Use an appropriate ‘tone of voice’ in all communications, including written and digital, that reflect the organisation’s brand.
  • Provide clear explanations and offer options in order to help customers make choices that are mutually beneficial to both the customer and your organisation.
  • Be able to organise yourself, prioritise your own workload/activity and work to meet deadlines.
  • Demonstrate patience and calmness.
  • Show you understand the customer’s point of view.
  • Use appropriate sign-posting or resolution to meet your customers needs and manage expectations.
  • Maintain informative communication during service recovery.