Customer Service Specialist

The postholder is required to work as part of a team providing the first point of contact over the telephone, webchat, email, whitemail and face to face for all Somerset Council Services.

Contact will be from the public, service users and other internal and external professionals and organisations.

The postholder will liaise with and provide feedback to service areas and management with suggestions for improvement and development. As part of a rota, the postholder will be required to undertake the duties below within the Contact Centre and Customer Service Point.

The successful post holder can work from the Yeovil office or Shepton Mallet office (their choice) and will focus on supporting customer contact relating to Council Tax

As part of the Customer Contact team deal with telephone, webchat, and email to:

• Respond to all contacts from any Somerset Council Service. May receive calls including safeguarding from Adults and Childrens and will be required to take relevant details and pass onto a colleague within the Customer Contact team.

• Assess the needs of each contact through active listening, questioning and some scripts to provide the necessary information, guidance, support or services. Interrogate and interpret online information, guidance documents and the use of other line of business systems. Wherever possible all interactions will be resolved at the first point of contact. Use both formal procedures and their own judgement to identify if the enquiry requires further consultation or routing to a specialist within a Somerset Council Service.

• Record in the appropriate system all customer data and service requirements and where required work-flow to the appropriate individual or team. Record data to enable the Contact Centre managers to monitor and track service, team and individual performance. Maintain an awareness of contact volumes and manage their own availability using the telephony system to maximise their performance and the performance of the Contact Centre.

• Review information held on systems and/or website to identify inaccurate information or to highlight areas of improvement and efficiency for system use and processes. Follow the electronic feedback process to report this information as well as meeting regularly with Managers to provide feedback on behalf of the team.

• Keep up to date with any changes to Somerset Council Services including consultations which may result in contact from members of the public or other organisations.

• Liaise with staff within Services where there are discrepancies in information available on the Councils websites. Collate data/feedback to provide to the service areas.

• Deal with all contacts in line with the Councils policies and procedures, eg

Equalities and Diversity, and relevant legislation, eg the Data Protection Act or Freedom of Information. All data recorded must be relevant and accurate.