Customer Support Apprentice

Summary

Working as part of a team, you will work alongside our external sales colleagues as the face of the business to our customers. It’s a busy, fast paced environment where you will learn all about our Saica products and services as well as what our customers need and how to best manage their expectations.

Annual wage: £17,004 a year
Minimum wage rates (opens in new tab)
Training course: Customer service specialist (level 3)
Hours: Monday to Friday, 09.00 to 16.30 (flexible). A total of 37 hours a week.
37 hours a week
Possible start date: Tuesday 1 October
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

As one of the UKs largest corrugated packaging manufacturers, clients come to Saica for solutions to their ever-changing packaging needs. From preventing bottles from smashing, protecting home deliveries from transportation damage, to designing sustainable yet attractive displays to show off fresh produce in shops and supermarkets, its highly likely you will have seen Saica packaging wrapped around a broad range of every day recognisable high street brands without even realising!

The UK packaging industry employs over 85,000 people, and is renowned for being an industry offering job security, longevity and great career opportunities.

The Role:

This apprenticeship is a perfect opportunity for someone who has a desire to work in a customer service environment. You will be confident, with a mature attitude, organised and enjoy building strong relationships whilst demonstrating empathy and kindness to everyone that you interact with.

You will work as part of a team in our Customer Services office but will have the opportunity to spend time in all other departments to help you develop a deeper knowledge of the wider business functions and how they link into the very important customer services role. Your role will include helping to create solutions to our customers' packaging requirements as well as supporting the end-to-end process from concept to delivery.

As you build experience, you will be assigned a core set of customers to look after. You will need to ensure that their orders are fulfilled and delivered on time as well as handle any technical queries they may have.

The types of tasks you will be involved in on a day-to-day basis are:

Receiving and processing customer orders, through to a timely delivery
Providing prices, quotations, invoices, credit notes and dealing with customer complaints where necessary
Supporting with design requirements
Supporting with investigations around product quality & improvements
Liaising with our external sales team
Monitoring stock levels
Providing reports of KPIs and customer feedback
Working with all the different departments to ensure the correct solution for both the factory and the customer

Where you’ll work

Colthrop Lane

Thatcham

Berks

RG19 4NH

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

WEST BERKSHIRE TRAINING CONSORTIUM

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

Most of your day to day training will take place within the Customer Services department supported by our other Customer Services colleagues, however, you will also visit other key departments on site to build a broad knowledge of our industry and products which will support you within your role.

The Customer Service Specialist Standard is delivered through blended learning. You would train one day a month at WBTC Newbury and have a 1-1 monthy training and review meeting with your training consultant.

Requirements

Essential qualifications

GCSE in:

English (grade 4 or C)
Maths (grade 4 /C)

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
Team working

Other requirements

The role is mainly office based (Thatcham), however you will be given the opportunity to travel to meet some of our customers at their sites and also to Saica's sister production site at Newport Wales. Ideally candidates will hold a 5/C in maths and English but consideration will be given to those who have achieved a grade 4. The role will require IT skills as all of the tools we use are computer based.

About this company

Founded in 1943, Saica Pack leads initiatives in the main markets. We care about our customers’ products therefore our teams develop end-to-end solutions to add value to their packaging. Present in 11 countries & continues to grow, with 10,232 employees across the group. OUR MISSION To provide sustainable paper solutions for corrugated board and packaging, while developing circularity in waste management. OUR VALUES WE CARE: Sustainable and Profitable Growth, Safety, Environment, Long-term investments and results. WE VALUE: Commitment and Teamwork, People Development, Quality, Service, Continuous Improvement. WE CHALLENGE: Innovation, Efficiency, Development, R+D+i Technology. https://www.saica.com/en/ (opens in new tab)

https://www.saica.com/en/ (opens in new tab)

After this apprenticeship

Saica promote and encourage internal development of our people.
We operate a two-tier system within our Customer Services department, so you will join us at a level one and can progress onto a level two over time.
Further development opportunities could be sideways into more technical areas of the business, or perhaps into external sales or a leadership role in the future.

Ask a question

The contact for this apprenticeship is:

WEST BERKSHIRE TRAINING CONSORTIUM

Rachel Eaves

rachel@wbtc-uk.com

07922 426414

The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC1000277186.

Apply now

Closes in 9 days (Monday 30 September at 11:59pm)

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.

Cookies on Find an apprenticeship

Contents