Customer Service Specialist Apprenticeship

COLUMBUS MCKINNON CORPORATION LIMITED

CHESTER (CH1 4NZ)

Closes in 16 days (Friday 24 October 2025 at 11:59pm)

Posted on 7 October 2025

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Summary

To assist the sales team by providing a committed, proactive support function in all aspects of everyday sales activity, ensuring the customer’s experience of doing business with our organisation is a positive and memorable one.

Wage

£20,000 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 with 30m unpaid lunch break and Friday 08:30 – 13:30 without a break.

37 hours a week

Start date

Saturday 25 October 2025

Duration

1 year 2 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

  • Responding to customer requests for product information, price and/or availability via e-mail, phone, chat applications
  • Providing support to the sales@ e-mail address for volume enquiries
  • Acting as the first line of contact for inbound sales team phone calls
  • Providing follow-up and tracking with customers on quotation requests and on receipt of goods and paperwork and service ratings
  • Assist with support for the training we offer to our customers
  • Pivoting data from tracking and follow-up work, from our CRM and from other channels to identify opportunities to improve, identify customer needs and/or to maintain positive customer experiences
  • Adheres to all local legal, health and safety and compliance requirements, policies and procedures

Where you'll work

KNUTSFORD WAY
SEALAND INDUSTRIAL ESTATE
CHESTER
CH1 4NZ

Training

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

Training provider

JUNIPER TRAINING LIMITED

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

Training schedule

This training schedule has not been finalised. Check with this employer if you’ll need to travel to a college or training location for this apprenticeship.

Requirements

Essential qualifications

GCSE in:

English & maths (grade 4 - 9)

Share if you have other relevant qualifications and industry experience. The apprenticeship can be adjusted to reflect what you already know.

Skills

  • Communication skills
  • Attention to detail
  • Organisation skills
  • Problem solving skills
  • Number skills
  • Logical
  • Team working
  • Initiative
  • Patience
  • Physical fitness

Other requirements

5 GCSE’s including Maths and English Previous experience in a customer service role (1 - 2 years) Relevant NVQ or sales qualification an advantage Strong numeric, analytical skills Attention to detail and ability to multi-task Good planning, time management and prioritisation of tasks MS Office, particularly Excel and CRM experience, Salesforce in use Strong written and spoken English language Willingness to continue to train, to learn, to grow

About this employer

With a history spanning 150 years, Columbus McKinnon is a global leader in intelligent motion solutions for material handling. Our high-quality brands, such as STAHL CraneSystems, Yale, Pfaff-silberblau, Dorner, Magnetek, CM and Duff-Norton, work together to move the world forward and improve lives. Whether it’s increasing safety or improving productivity, our intelligent motion technology is hard at work worldwide.

https://www.cmco.com/en-gb/ (opens in new tab)

Company benefits

Paid medical appointment attendance and annual medical screenings. Service anniversary recognition from Year 1. Early finish Fridays. 25 days holiday plus public holidays per annum + bank holidays. Global bi-annual performance management process.

After this apprenticeship

  • Full-time permanent employment will be offered to the right candidate.

Ask a question

The contact for this apprenticeship is:

JUNIPER TRAINING LIMITED

Paul Nightingale

Paul.nightingale@junipertraining.co.uk

07395789959

The reference code for this apprenticeship is VAC1000345147.

Apply now

Closes in 16 days (Friday 24 October 2025 at 11:59pm)

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