Sales and Customer Service Apprentice

Summary

Support the day-to-day sales activities of the business by delivering excellent customer service, handling customer orders, enquiries, queries and give support to the Sales department Team leader & Senior Management teams. Organising logistics & deliveries with the warehouse and purchasing team to ensure customers receive the correct goods on time.

Wage

£18,000 a year

Check minimum wage rates (opens in new tab)

Training course

Customer service specialist (level 3)

Hours

Monday to Thursday 08:30-17:00, Friday 08:30-16:00.

39 hours a week

Start date

Friday 1 August 2025

Duration

1 year 3 months

Positions available

1

Work

Most of your apprenticeship is spent working. You’ll learn on the job by getting hands-on experience.

What you'll do at work

Maintain and develop the customer base within the sales department, you will be integral to the continuation and growth of the customer base through a high standard of service-related activities.
Key responsibilities
• Develop new and existing customer relationships by offering excellent customer service
• Identify opportunities for incremental sales and margin, communicating where necessary with External Sales & Management
• Answering sales and enquiry calls and emails
• Processing sales quotations, sales orders & customer returns
• Sales support to vendor managed inventory
• Kit operations including Quotations, Kit Amendments, MRP, production orders, BoM’s, booking in and releasing kits
• Responding to customer queries in a professional and timely manner
• All project and key customer activity, including new customer tenders, developing customer accounts, maintaining customer Kanban, and labelling systems
• Actioning customer queries and resolving account issues in a professional and timely manner
• Customer Reports issuing and processing
General responsibilities
• Helping with basic IT requirements, printing issues, labelling issues
• Checking/picking stock when needed
• Picking up colleagues' emails/ orders/ enquiries when needed
• Holiday cover and support to other departments

Where you'll work

2-4 Mosley Street Business Park
DE14 1DW

Training

Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.

College or training organisation

BURTON AND SOUTH DERBYSHIRE COLLEGE

Your training course

Customer service specialist (level 3)

Understanding apprenticeship levels (opens in new tab)

What you'll learn

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

Level 3 Customer Service Specialist apprenticeship standard.
Level 2 Functional Skills in maths, English and ICT (if required).

This apprenticeship is delivered through a combination of work-based assessment and day/block release. The programme will culminate in an End Point Assessment, where all the skills and knowledge gained on the apprenticeship will be formally tested.

Requirements

Essential qualifications

GCSE or equivalent in:

Maths and English (grade 4/C 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

Administrative skills
Analytical skills
Attention to detail
Communication skills
Customer care skills
IT skills
Non judgemental
Number skills
Organisation skills
Presentation skills
Problem solving skills
Team working
Time-Management

About this company

We are proud to offer a complete range of over 15,000 industrial fasteners and fixings, services and fastener management solutions. With the technical know-how and support required, as well as over 30 years’ experience and expertise, we are confident in offering you the best services and products you can rely on! We encourage you to explore our website and take full advantage of the information available. Please also feel free to contact us, we are more than happy to help with any of your enquiries. Founded in 1988 Pugh & Sanders specialises in stock replenishment systems and runs its own fleet of vehicles providing same/next-day delivery nationwide. We have over 10,000 square feet of stock holding facilities. Pugh & Sanders has a wealth of experience of supplying the rail industry, particularly the support of maintenance repair overhaul facilities across of a variety of usages in rolling stock, power train, and track refurbishment. Where parts are safety critical the company provide traceability and full certification. Pugh & Sanders recognise that quality and reliability are paramount in supplying every sector. Pugh & Sanders is ISO9001 Quality approved.

After this apprenticeship

High potential of a full-time post once the apprenticeship is complete. Good career progression through the company.

Ask a question

The contact for this apprenticeship is: