Customer Support Associate (Specialist Support Team) in Newcastle

We’re excited to offer a rewarding opportunity to join our Specialist Support Team—a group dedicated to helping customers with complex needs, such as serious mental health challenges or multiple vulnerabilities, who may struggle to manage their everyday banking. In this role, you’ll provide compassionate, tailored support through both telephony and back-office channels. You’ll work closely with internal teams across our stores and contact centres, as well as external partners including third-party charities, to ensure our customers receive the care and assistance they need.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll be located at our nearest regional office or hub. There will be a need to regularly connect with colleagues for collaboration and in some locations you’ll be expected to spend at least two days a week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, in the office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works.

As a Customer Support Associate within the Specialist Support Team, you will focus on supporting vulnerable customers through complex and often emotionally challenging situations, ensuring they receive the right help, guidance and specialist support. You will handle inbound customer calls with empathy, patience and professionalism. Asking probing questions to understand each customer's individual circumstances and identify appropriate support solutions, you will recognise when specialist intervention is required and refer customers to relevant internal teams or external organisations. Supporting customers experiencing difficult and sensitive situations can be extremely challenging at times, you will need to be resilient in this role with a genuine passion for helping people through difficult situations remaining calm under pressure, even during emotionally challenging conversations.

You will collaborate with colleagues and external third parties such as solicitors and debt charities to ensure customers receive comprehensive support. You will share your knowledge and best practice with the wider team to foster a supportive and collaborative environment, build strong working relationships across the team and wider bank to ensure a seamless and compassionate customer experience.

About you

You will have:

• Experience of working with vulnerable customers with empathy and compassion showing resilience and emotional intelligence when handling difficult conversations.
• A proven track record of telephony experience handling complex situations with a calm, professional manner remaining customer-focused always.
• Examples of where you used active listening and strong communication skills to ensure the best outcome for a customer or client.
• Worked with other teams to support customers evidencing good decision-making skills and problem solving to identify tailored solutions.
• Experience of working collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind.
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand.
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development.
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes.

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• 25 days holiday, pro rata.
• Access to private medical insurance.
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement.
• Access to an annual performance-related bonus.
• Training and development to help you progress your career.
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death.
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year.

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. Once we’ve received your application successfully, we will invite you to the first stage; our online assessments! Within a few hours you’ll receive a link to your unique candidate hub – here we’ll ask you to complete some online assessments within 48 hours of applying; these include a situational judgement test, checking and numerical assessments – all focused around what’s important to us in a member facing role at Nationwide. We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.