IT Service Desk Customer Service Apprentice

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

West Midlands, B15 2TT

Closes in 4 days (Sunday 27 October)

Posted on 11 October 2024

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Contents

Summary

The IT Service Desk is the public face of the University’s IT Services department. The Service Desk handles everything from individual technical problems to system outages. They are a single point of contact for our users - helping them to easily find solutions, request help and contact other IT teams.

Annual wage
£20,693 a year

Minimum wage rates (opens in new tab)

rising to £25,866. per annum after 12 months service

Training course
Customer service practitioner (level 2)
Hours
Normally, Monday to Friday 8am - 6pm shifts.

36 hours a week

Possible start date

Monday 18 November

Duration

1 year 3 months

Positions available

1

Work

As an apprentice, you’ll work at a company and get hands-on experience. You’ll gain new skills and work alongside experienced staff.

What you’ll do at work

The post holder is primarily responsible for learning how to analyse new issues and requests. This includes taking phone calls from users or helping them in person, as well as online using live chat and our web-based contact form. They are empowered to resolve most queries and accurately assign more complicated or time-consuming issues to other colleagues.

Team members are expected to contribute individually and within a collaborative working environment. This helps us to deliver excellent customer service and meet our service standards. The post holder should demonstrate the values of the IT Service Desk by maintaining open and honest communication, collaborating with others and being inclusive and approachable.

Main duties the apprentice will learn:

  • Providing first line IT support to staff, students and visitors via all the Service Desk’s contact methods
  • Ensuring all contact with users is recorded accurately in the IT Service Management tool
  • Identifying trends within recent and ongoing issues by monitoring incoming incident records and collaborating with colleagues
  • Utilising skills, experience and documented knowledge to provide solutions to users for the majority of reported issues
  • Accurately triage more complex or time-consuming issues to other support teams, by building a thorough understanding of our services and support teams
  • Developing a broad understanding of the University’s organisational structure, business functions, strategic aims and key stakeholders to accurately assess the impact of issues
  • Participating in ITIL-based Incident and Problem Management in line with documented processes
  • Updating the IT Services Status Page and social media in response to service outages
  • Occasionally carrying out remote desktop support to resolve minor issues
  • Ensuring that technical solutions are documented within the IT Service Management tool for future reference
  • Being an advocate for our users and escalate whenever IT support is falling below expected levels, to ensure issues are resolved in acceptable timescales and excellent customer service is delivered
  • Contributing to the creation and maintenance of knowledge base articles, ensuring documentation is easy to follow, written in plain English and tailored to the correct audience
  • Any other duties that may reasonably be required in line with your position within IT Services or to help deliver excellent customer service
  • Supports equality and values diversity, moderates own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others

Where you’ll work

Edgbaston

Birmingham

West Midlands

B15 2TT

Training

An apprenticeship includes regular training with a college or other training organisation. At least 20% of your working hours will be spent training or studying.

College or training organisation

HIT TRAINING LTD

Your training course

Customer service practitioner (level 2)

Equal to GCSE

Course contents
  • 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
  • Depending on your job role and work environment: Use appropriate communication skills, along with reinforcement techniques (to confirm understanding) during non-facing customer interactions.
  • Depending on your job role and work environment: 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.

    • Your training plan

    • Customer Service Practitioner level 2 standard
    • Apprentices will receive internal training on the IT service desk and customer service expectations. In addition apprentices receive bespoke off-the-job training from our provider HIT training

    Requirements

    Essential qualifications

    GCSE or equivalent in:

    • English (grade C or above (4-9))
    • Maths (grade C or above (4-9))

    Let the company know about other relevant qualifications and industry experience you have. They can adjust the apprenticeship to reflect what you already know.

    Skills

    • Communication skills
    • IT skills
    • Attention to detail
    • Organisation skills
    • Customer care skills
    • Problem solving skills
    • Administrative skills
    • Analytical skills
    • Logical
    • Team working
    • Initiative
    • Non judgemental
    • Patience

    About this company

    A world top 100 university and part of the prestigious Russell Group, the University of Birmingham makes important things happen. Delivering groundbreaking research and excellent research led teaching. People are at the heart of what we are and do. The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University. We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work. Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries. The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum, and botanical gardens.

    https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/apprenticeships/index.aspx (opens in new tab)

    Disability Confident

    Disability Confident

    A fair proportion of interviews for this apprenticeship will be offered to applicants with a disability or long-term health condition. This includes non-visible disabilities and conditions.

    You can choose to be considered for an interview under the Disability Confident scheme. You’ll need to meet the essential requirements to be considered for an interview.

    After this apprenticeship

    • Customer Service Officer
    • 1st or 2nd line support roles in our IT service desk

     

    Ask a question

    The contact for this apprenticeship is:

    HIT TRAINING LTD

    apprenticeships@contacts.bham.ac.uk

    The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC1000281934.

    Apply now

    Closes in 4 days (Sunday 27 October)

    When you apply, you’ll be asked to sign in with a GOV.UK One Login. You can create one at the same time as applying for this apprenticeship.

    After signing in, you’ll apply for this apprenticeship on the company's website.

    Company’s application instructions

    Please complete our online application form and upload a CV.