Level 2 Apprenticeship – Customer Service Practitioner

Course Overview

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.

Entry Requirements

You will need to have achieved GCSEs at grade 3-9 (or comparable qualification) in English and maths.

Organisations will set their own entry criteria and are more likely to select individuals with more advanced inter-personal skills, experience of working with customers in some capacity.

What the course covers

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.

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.

The apprenticeship includes:

Skills : business-focused service delivery, providing a positive customer experience, working with your customers, customer insights, customer service performance and service improvement.

Knowledge : business knowledge and understanding, customer journey knowledge, knowing your customers and their needs, customer service culture and environment awareness.

Behaviours : develop self, ownership/ responsibility, team working, equality and presentation.

End Point Assessment

For each of the three assessment methods, all pass criteria (100%) must be achieved to progress and complete the apprenticeship programme, as outlined below. For a distinction to be awarded, apprentices must also achieve a distinction in each assessment method, as outlined below;

Apprentice Showcase
The apprentice showcase is compiled after 12 months of on-programme learning. The Apprentice Showcase enables apprentices to reflect and present examples of their development over the whole on-programme period. With guidance from the employer and/or training provider the apprentice will select appropriate evidence from the on-programme portfolio to demonstrate the minimum requirements of the standard at the final stage of the programme as an ‘Apprentice Showcase’. This will attest to professional competence at the level. The apprentice showcase will be reviewed and assessed by the independent assessor.
The evidence contained in the apprentice showcase will be assessed against the following areas of the standard as highlighted in Appendix A:

1. Understanding the organisation
2. Meeting regulations and legislation
3. Systems and resources
4. Product and service knowledge
5. Influencing skills
6. Personal organisation
7. Dealing with customer conflict and challenge
8. Developing self
9. Being open to feedback
10. Team working
    

Practical Observation & Professional Discussion
The practical observation and professional discussion provides the opportunity for substantial synoptic assessment across the standard and must include customer interaction.

Practical Observation
The practical observation will be pre-planned and scheduled to when the apprentice will be in their normal place of work and will be carried out by the Independent Assessor. The observation should enable the apprentice to evidence their skills, knowledge and behaviour from across the standard to demonstrate genuine and demanding work objectives. Each situation within the observation will be different, and examples are, handling a general enquiry, dealing with a customer complaint or a need for further information or detail, but it is mandatory that the observation covers as a minimum: presentation, equality, interpersonal skills, communication and personal organisation. Those areas of the standard which are not able to be evidenced during the observation will be discussed subsequently as part of the professional discussion with the Independent Assessor.

Professional Discussion
The professional discussion will be a structured discussion between the apprentice and the Independent Assessor, following the observation, to establish the apprentice’s understanding and application of knowledge, skills and behaviours. The professional discussion will need to take place in a suitable environment and should last for a maximum of one hour. The discussion will be against set criteria in the occupational brief to ensure standardisation and consistency. It will be appropriately structured to draw out the best of the apprentice’s energy, enthusiasm, competence and excellence.

Fees and funding

A 5% employer contribution fee may be applicable depending on the age of the apprentice and the size of your organisation.