Customer Service Specialist

• Be able to manage own personal and professional development, and plan further development for self
• Be able to evaluate the effectiveness of Continuous Professional Development activities for self

Customer Service culture and business environment awareness

• Understand your organisation’s current business strategy in relation to customers and make recommendations for its future
• 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
• Understand your business environment, culture and leadership styles, and how they influence customer service
• Understand the impact your service provision has on the wider organisation and the value it adds

• Analyse your customer types, to identify or anticipate their potential needs and expectations when providing your service
• Know your internal and external customers and how their behaviour may require different approaches from you
• 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

• Understand and critically evaluate the possible journeys of your customers, including challenges and the end-to-end experience
• Identifying where highs and lows of the customer journey produce a range of emotions in the customer
• 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 experience
• Keep current, knowledge and understanding of regulatory considerations, drivers and impacts in relation to how you deliver for customers

• 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
• Use written and verbal communication to simplify and provide complex information in a way that supports positive customer outcome in the relevant format

• Proactively gather customer feedback, through a variety of methods. Critically analyse, and evaluate the meaning, implication and facts and act upon it
• Resolve complex issues by being able to choose from and successfully apply a wide range of approaches
• Find solutions that meet your organisations needs as well as the customer requirements
• 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, in line with new and relevant legislation, regulations and industry best practice