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CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST
LEVEL 3 MODULES
Customer Journey knowledge
● Understand and critically evaluate the possible journeys of your customers, including challenges and the end-to-end experience
● Understand the reasons why customer issues and complex situations sometimes need referral or escalation for specialist attention
● Understand the underpinning business processes that support you in bringing about the best outcome for customers and your organisation
● Understand commercial factors and authority limits for delivering the required customer
Customer service culture and environment
awareness
● Keep current, knowledge and understanding of regulatory considerations, drivers and impacts in relation to how you deliver for customers
● Understand your business environment and culture and the position of customer service within it
● Understand your organisation structure and what role each department needs to play in delivering Customer Service and what the consequences are should things go wrong
Providing a positive customer experience
● Through advanced questioning, listening and summarising negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes
● Manage challenging and complicated situations within your level of authority and make recommendations to enable and deliver change to service or strategy
● Use clear explanations, provide options and solutions to influence and help customers make choices and agree next steps
● Explore and interpret the customer experience to inform and influence achieving a positive result for customer satisfaction
● Demonstrate a cost conscious mind-set when meeting customer and the business needs
● Identifying where highs and lows of the customer journey produce a range of emotions in the customer
● Use written and verbal communication to simplify and provide complex information in a way that supports positive customer outcome in the relevant format
Customer service performance
● Maintain a positive relationship even when you are unable to deliver the customer’s expected outcome
● When managing referrals or escalations take into account historical interactions and challenges to determine next steps
Business Knowledge and Understanding
● Understand what continuous improvement means in a service environment and how your recommendations for change impact your organisation
● Understand the impact your service provision has on the wider organisation and the value it adds
● Understand your organisation’s business strategy in relation to customers and make recommendations
● Understand the principles and benefits of being able to think about the future when taking action or making service related decisions
● Understand a range of leadership styles and apply them successfully in a customer service
environment
Knowing your customers and their needs/
Customer Insight
● Know your internal and external customers and how their behaviour may require different approaches from you
● Understand how to analyse, use and present a range of information to provide customer insight
● Understand what drives loyalty, retention and satisfaction and how they impact on your organisation
● Understand different customer types and the role of emotions in bringing about a successful outcome
● Understand how customer expectations can differ between cultures, ages and social profiles
Business focused service delivery
● Demonstrate a continuous improvement and future focused approach to customer service delivery including decision making and providing recommendations or advice
● Resolve complex issues by choosing from and applying a wide range of approaches
● Find solutions that meet your organisations needs as well as the customer requirements
Working with your customers / customer insights
● Proactively gather customer feedback, through a variety of methods. Critically analyse, and evaluate the meaning, implication and facts and act upon it
● Analyse your customer types, to identify or anticipate their potential needs and expectations when providing your service
Service improvement
● Analyse the end to end service experience, seeking input from others where required, supporting development of solutions
● Make recommendations based on your findings to enable improvement
● Make recommendations and implement where possible, changes in line with new and relevant legislation, regulations and industry best practice
Knowlege and Skills
A professional for direct customer support within all
sectors and organisations
The main purpose of a customer service specialist is to be a ‘professional’ for direct customer support within all sectors and organisation types.
They are an advocate of Customer Service who acts as a referral point for dealing with more complex or technical customer requests, complaints, and queries.
As an expert in their organisation’s products and/or services, they share knowledge with the wider team and colleagues.
They gather and analyse data and customer information that influences change and improvements in service.
Utilising both organisational and generic IT systems to carry out their 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 other customer service point.
Grey Seal support Customer Service Specialists to have the knowledge, skills and behaviours to deliver on their responsibilities and personally develop within their role.
They will learn new ideas, theories and methods as well as consolidating existing knowledge and experience.
Having this knowledge and with the support of their Trainer
they will have the confidence to put new knowledge into practice.
Completion of this apprenticeship will lead to eligibility to join the:
Institute of Customer Service as an Individual member at Professional level.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
SPECIALIST
Level 3 Standard
COURSE DESIGN AND TRAINING DELIVERY
All Trainers are qualified subject specialists with strong experience within the sector. They will use
use a variety of training methods and resources that can include:
● Trainer led group training sessions / workshops face to face or online using video conferencing
● Individual training sessions face to face, telephone or video conferencing
● Resources – paper based, electronic and signposted external resources
● Online portfolio that can be accessed by learner and designated organisational contact
● Virtual learning environment
● Individualised approach
● Access to a Trainer through the portfolio, phone, text, email, IM
● Follow a personalised programme for Maths and English