IT Apprentice

Buckinghamshire Council

Aylesbury, HP20 1UD

Closes in 11 days (Wednesday 2 October)

Posted on 12 September 2024

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Contents

Summary

Are you looking for a future career whilst achieving an apprenticeship qualification? Do you have a passion to learn and work in IT? If this is you we want to hear from you! Our IT Services Team provides IT solutions and support to over 4000 internal customers. You will learn on the job and work to successfully resolve customer IT issues.

Annual wage
£12,347 a year

Minimum wage rates (opens in new tab)

All your training will be funded by us. Your initial apprentice salary will be £12,347 p.a. and will go up to National Minimum Wage if you are 19+ when you start the 2nd year of your apprenticeship.

Training course
Customer service specialist (level 3)
Hours
Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm

37 hours a week

Possible start date

Friday 1 November

Duration

1 Year 6 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

As an advocate of Customer Service excellence, you will act as a referral point for dealing with complex or technical customer requests, issues, complaints, and queries.  Working alongside experienced IT professionals you will be mentored and trained in the use of various IT systems and software packages. Your duties will include:

  • Diagnosing & resolving software, hardware and networking incidents
  • Learning how to use a range of IT support tools
  • providing excellent customer service when speaking to internal and external customers
  • Identify and recommend areas where improvements could be made within own role / team
  • Receive and respond appropriately to queries and provide relevant and accurate advice / support in a timely manner within remit of role
  • Accurately record, update and document requests using the appropriate IT service desk system and adhere to procedures. Check for accuracy and validity. Flag potential anomalies / issues

Where you’ll work

County Hall

Walton Street

Aylesbury

HP20 1UD

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

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNCIL

Your training course

Customer service specialist (level 3)

Equal to A level

Course contents
  • Business focused service delivery: Demonstrate a continuous improvement and future focussed approach to customer service delivery including decision making and providing recommendations or advice
  • Business focused service delivery: Resolve complex issues by being able to choose from and successfully apply a wide range of approaches
  • Business focused service delivery: Find solutions that meet your organisations needs as well as the customer requirements
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Through advanced questioning, listening and summarising negotiate mutually beneficial outcomes
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Manage challenging and complicated situations within your level of authority and make recommendations to enable and deliver change to service or strategy
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Use clear explanations, provide options and solutions to influence and help customers make choices and agree next steps
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Explore and interpret the customer experience to inform and influence achieving a positive result for customer satisfaction
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Demonstrate a cost conscious mind-set when meeting customer and the business needs
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Identifying where highs and lows of the customer journey produce a range of emotions in the customer
  • Providing a positive customer experience: Use written and verbal communication to simplify and provide complex information in a way that supports positive customer outcome in the relevant format
  • Working with 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
  • Working with customers/customer insights: Analyse your customer types, to identify or anticipate their potential needs and expectations when providing your service
  • Customer Service performance: Maintain a positive relationship even when you are unable to deliver the customer’s expected outcome
  • Customer Service performance: When managing referrals or escalations take into account historical interactions and challenges to determine next steps
  • Service Improvement: Analyse the end to end service experience, seeking input from others where required, supporting development of solutions
  • Service Improvement: Make recommendations based on your findings to enable improvement
  • Service Improvement: Make recommendations and implement where possible, changes in line with new and relevant legislation, regulations and industry best practice

    • Your training plan

    You will gain experience in a large organisation, whilst studying towards your nationally recognised qualification - Customer Service  L3 Specialist qualification, with 20% time out of the workplace for study, training and assessments.  Your training will be a via a blended learning approach, with face to face visits in your wokplace, on-line group workshops on a monthly basis and hands on training within the workplace providing you with all you require to be successful. You will be given one day a week to complete your training. 

    The training you will be completing as part of the Level 3 Customer Service apprenticeship standard includes: 

    • Knowing your customers            
    • Providing a positive customer experience
    • Meeting regulations and legislation        
    • Systems and resources
    • Working with your customers/customer insights
    • Dealing with customer conflict and challenge     

     

    Requirements

    Desirable qualifications

    GCSE or equivalent in:

    • English and Maths (grade Grade C /4 or above)

    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
    • Customer care skills
    • Problem solving skills
    • Analytical skills
    • Team working
    • Patience

    About this company

    IT comes under our Resources department which covers a wide range of specialisms, including Human Resources, Finance, ICT and Business Operations. Our main focus is supporting the other directorates to provide the best possible service to our residents. To do that, we have to make sure we have the right people in the right roles across the organisation. From our finance teams, working strategically to ensure the best value from public money; to HR keeping our employees healthy and happy, each service is vital in making sure Buckinghamshire Council has what it needs to run effectively and efficiently.

    https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/ (opens in new tab)

    Company benefits

    Paid holiday package Join our generous Pension scheme; Get 50% off of Arriva bus travel Receive a range of restaurant, shop & gym discounts through our Employee Benefits scheme. Apply for a TOTEM Card (formerly called the NUS Extra card)

    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

    We cannot guarantee a permanent position following the completion of the apprenticeship, but we have an excellent track record of keeping our successful apprentices in the organisation. This apprenticeship is a great opportunity to gain a range of IT /Customer Service skills and gain experience of working for a large, and busy, IT service.

     

    Ask a question

    The contact for this apprenticeship is:

    BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNCIL

    Chris Troke

    chris.troke@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

    The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC1000276614.

    Apply now

    Closes in 11 days (Wednesday 2 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.