Customer Service Practitioner

The role of a customer service practitioner is to deliver high quality products and services to the customers of their organisation. The 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. The Apprentice may be the first point of contact and work in any sector or organisation type.

The Apprentices actions will influence the customer experience and their satisfaction within the organisation. Demonstrating excellent customer service skills and behaviours as well as product and/or service knowledge when delivering to customers.  Providing service in line with the organisation’s customer service standards and strategy and within appropriate regulatory requirements. Customer interactions may cover a wide range of situations and can include; face-to-face, telephone, post, email, text and social media.

Gateway Requirements

The End-point Assessment takes place after a minimum of 12 month’s on-programme learning. The employer, in conjunction with the training provider, will formally sign-off that the apprentice has met the minimum requirements in regards to the knowledge, skills and behaviours outlined in the standard. The apprentice, employer and provider will confirm that the apprentice has achieved Level 1 English and Maths plus has attempted L2 in both.

End-point Assessment (EPA)

EPA consists of three discrete assessment methods. These can be delivered in any order and is a face-to-face assessment. If a learner is doing a re-take for a Customer Service Practitioner standard and they FAIL they can re-take the assessment. If they then pass at the second attempt, regardless of the amount of work they do, they will only receive a PASS mark.

Assessment Method	Weighting	Duration	To achieve a Pass	To achieve a Distinction
Apprentice Showcase	65%	12 months on-programme	100%	Meet all of the pass criteria AND 70% of the distinction criteria
Practical Observation	20%	Minimum 1 hour	100%	Meet all of the pass criteria AND 80% of the distinction criteria
Professional Discussion	15%	Maximum 1 hour	100%	Meet all of the pass criteria AND 75% of the distinction criteria

Apprentice Showcase

The apprentice showcase is compiled after 12 months of on-programme learning, it enables apprentices to reflect and present examples of their development over the whole on-programme period. The apprentice showcase can be presented face-to-face or remotely, depending on the needs of the apprentice and the employer.  It can be showcased through the delivery of a presentation or by a virtual form of assessment such as submission of a report, storyboard, journal etc.

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 IEA over a minimum of one hour. The observation should enable the apprentice to evidence their skills, knowledge and behaviour within the standard to demonstrate genuine and demanding work objectives

Professional Discussion

The professional discussion will be conducted against set criteria and will also clarify any questions the IEA has from their assessment of the learner journey and practical observation. The professional discussion will need to take place in a suitable environment and should be a maximum of one hour.

Feedback

The IEA will not provide the apprentice (or their manager) with a preliminary grade, as it will be subject to Skillsfirst internal quality assurance processes. Skillsfirst will aim to confirm the apprentice’s final and overall grade approximately 10 working days after the last assessment.

Certification

Once moderation is complete and the apprentice has successfully completed all EPA methods, Skillsfirst will activate certification through the Apprenticeship assessment service. Certificates will be sent directly to the employer.

You can download a copy of the information on this page here

A link to the Customer Service Practitioner standards page can be found here