Customer Support Officer

About The Role

A Platinum Investors in People employer and an award-winning UK bank, focused on growth. Our customers include savers and businesses across the UK and, working together, we use our specialist expertise to help them achieve their ambitions and build a sustainable future. If you’re looking for an opportunity to grow in a friendly environment, we’re looking for you!

We’re flexible, inclusive, committed to your wellbeing and passionate about you reaching your potential.

Brief description

We are very excited to announce we are currently recruiting to expand our innovative and energetic team. You will be a part of a dynamic team on a mission to revolutionise customer experiences. You must be a self-motivated individual and pride yourself on building excellent relationships with existing and potential customers.

Career progression continues to be a strength as our highly profitable business continues to grow and invest across all business areas whilst taking their ambitious business plans on to the next level.

Purpose of the role

The purpose of the role is to efficiently and effectively recover any monies due on consumer portfolios within the current regulatory frameworks. This will involve dealing with both verbal and written communication with customers and authorised third parties. A high level of commitment, self-motivation and adherence to regulation and legislation is required as well as adhering to the Customer Operations policies and procedures, to provide suitable and good outcomes for our customers.

Duties and responsibilities

• Deal empathetically with customers whilst questioning and probing to understand their circumstances.
• Examine accounts in arrears, and up-to-date accounts, and work with customers to proactively identify; customers in vulnerable circumstances, customers experiencing financial hardship or a customer making a complaint, referring to specialist teams where applicable.
• Handle escalated calls from customers to ensure that complex queries and complaints are handled swiftly and effectively by making decisions on the correct course of action for an account.
• Understand the reason and likely timeframe of financial hardship and make suitable / sustainable arrangements with customers.
• Communicate with customers / authorised third parties to agree and monitor payment arrangements in line with the company's forbearance policy and the customers affordability.
• Monitor Judgment / orders cases to ensure that payments are made as ordered.
• Communicate and provide accurate information in a timely manner by relevant methods internally and externally in line with company policy and procedures.
• Identify customer needs and complete required actions in accordance with departmental processes and procedures.
• Manage, organise and update relevant information onto CACS/Aries and relevant databases.
• Become conversant and adhere to all departmental and HRD processes and procedures.
• Perform all tasks within the agreed Customer Operations service levels.
• Represent the organisation in a highly professional manner at all times.
• Adhere to agreed company regulation and external legislation e.g. FCA, OFCOM, rules, guidelines and principles, GDPR etc.
• Operate on an automated inbound and outbound dialling system.
• Embrace changes to policy and procedures and use own initiative to challenge potential barriers and provide the most appropriate outcome for the customer.
• Achieve personal objectives.
• Pro-actively identify and report risk events to the relevant risk champion.

About You

Skills

• Demonstrate excellent communication skills, ability to empathise, and challenge processes and work approaches appropriately.
• Ability to use own initiative and work as an effective team member.
• Ability / experience to identify and probe effectively where vulnerability / complaint or other underlying reasons are suspected.
• Ability to recognise when to adapt communication style to suit the customer or colleague.
• Problem analysis and problem solving with an attention to detail and accuracy.
• IT aptitude and the ability to learn appropriate systems.
• Adaptability and the ability to remain calm under pressure.
• A passionate "can do" attitude.

Even if you don’t meet all the criteria, we encourage you to apply. At Paragon, we value diversity and we’re excited to hear from passionate individuals like you! If you’re ready to contribute to the team, please apply.

Further information on the role can be found in the Purpose and Performance Profile (PPP), which is downloadable on this page.

Working hours

Our opening hours are; Monday 08:00-19:00, Tuesday 08:00-17:00, Wednesday 08:00-19:00, Thursday 08:00-17:00, Friday 08:00-17:00, Saturday 09:00-13:00. We ask that you work until 19:00 at least once per week and that you cover 2 Saturday shifts in an 8 week period. If you think that you can work with us to find a working pattern that suits your needs whilst helping us to manage our customers during those hours then don’t be afraid to talk about your preferences at your interview.

Inclusion

As a Disability Confident Employer, we want to ensure that our vacancies are accessible for everyone. If you have a disability, long term health condition or are neurodiverse and need us to adjust our recruitment process please get in touch with our recruitment team.

What can we offer you?

• Generous Holiday Allowance: Starting from 25 days and climbing to 30, you also get to enjoy a day off for your birthday, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve. You can also buy or sell up to a week’s leave.
• Share Save Scheme: Annually, you have the opportunity to buy shares in Paragon at a discounted rate.
• Profit Related Pay: We share some of our annual profit with our eligible employees.
• Pension Plan: We contribute up to 10% of your annual salary towards your pension.
• Family Friendly policies: We offer enhanced parental pay and paid time off for fertility treatment.
• Employee Discounts: Enjoy exclusive discounts on entertainment, travel, shopping, motoring and more.
• Volunteering Day: Contribute to causes you care about with one volunteering day per year.
• Life Assurance and Personal Accident Cover.

About Us

Be flexible. We promote flexibility around how and where we work so that you can achieve a healthier work-life balance. We encourage our team to find a work pattern that suits their needs, asking you to work from the office once per week and encouraging you to work from home when it suits you the most.

Be yourself. As an equal opportunities employer, we welcome diversity and care about inclusion. That’s why we want you to be your whole self at work. We believe an inclusive workplace is good for each of us, great for our customers and better for our business. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Network meets regularly to share challenges, experience, and ideas to build a more equal, diverse, and inclusive business.

Be heard. We listen to your point of view, with our People Forum and regular employee surveys making sure you can use your voice and influence our future.

Be well. We will give you access to a range of tools and resources to support your wellbeing. This will include a digital GP service via our free Employee Assistance Programme, access to our Wellbeing team to connect you with the help you need to get more out of life and our Vitality at Work programme to provide you with discounted gym membership, fitness equipment and another multitude of wellbeing services.

Be better. We want you to reach your potential and, as a Platinum Investors in People employer, we’ll encourage you to learn and develop by building a personalised development plan together with your manager.