Customer Service Administrator in Newcastle upon Tyne

Location: Northumbria Manufacturing Hub, Seaton Delaval, Whitley Bay

Salary Level 3 - £27,476 plus bonus

Hours – 37.5 per week, Monday to Friday, flexible to maintain a service between the hours 08:30 – 17:30. Part-time applicants welcome.

This is an office-based role.

Dimensions

The Commercial Department is responsible for the generation of non-core income for re-investment into patient care. The two main areas of success are NHS Fleet Solutions and NHS Home Electronics. Both businesses operate in the competitive salary sacrifice marketplace. An office-based team consisting of 70 members of staff have responsibility for the delivery of the service. This role will report directly to the Assistant Commercial Team Manager and is responsible for the administration of both schemes, NHS Fleet Solutions and NHS Home Electronics, on a day-to-day basis.

NHS Fleet Solutions have in excess of 250 public sector client organisations on a nationwide basis including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These 250 organisations lease 90,000 cars from NHS Fleet Solutions.

This is a customer service focused role which entails working in a fast-paced environment to deal with customer queries via telephone and email on a daily basis.

• Develop and maintain relationships with key industry personnel, e.g. Vehicle Manufacturers, NHS approved leasing companies, client Trust liaison officers, insurance company staff, Home Electronic Scheme suppliers, government officials and other key external contacts.
• Handle all problems/issues relating to the provision of lease cars and the subsequent delivery, ongoing maintenance, insurance and payment of said vehicles. This process involves complex queries and negotiation is often necessary, as is a sensitive approach.
• Deal with a wide variety of queries from employees, leasing companies, dealers, pool car providers/users, insurance brokers and managers/budget holders.
• Required to provide contentious information e.g. the challenging of and/or withdrawal of Trust employees’ entitlement to a lease car or advising drivers are liable to pay for damage to cars. This information must be relayed in a professional and non-confrontational manner.
• The post holder is required to explain financial aspects of both schemes. This includes how costs to drivers vary with different vehicle types, mileages and the effect that benefit in kind has on user’s tax codes.
• Describe and explain technical specifications of different manufacturers and models of car.
• Understand and explain the varying complexities of salary sacrifice and how these relate to car lease and home electronic schemes.
• Manage the delivery of vehicles with lease companies/dealers, which often includes the rescheduling of vehicle delivery dates, often at very short notice and with inconvenience and cost to suppliers.
• Manage the process of Home Electronics from enquiry to order to delivery to end of lease, with customers and their employees.
• Ensure vehicles are ordered at the most advantageous price from the panel of suppliers to gain best value for the trust and its customers.
• Evaluate quotations for repairs of vehicles, assess if quote is reasonable and if so approve work.
• Responsible for converting quotations into placed business.
• Identify and react to potential customer enquiries ensuring a very high level of accuracy.
• Work efficiently and enthusiastically towards the team targets.
• Identify and highlight potential sales opportunities e.g. targeted vehicles.
• Handle potential customers who have registered on the system but not progressed to the quotation stage, obtained quotes but not ordered and accepted quotes but not returned complete paperwork.
• Engage with customers on the ‘live chat’ area of the website (when developed).
• Responsible for answering routine customer queries prior to point of order ensuring the highest possible conversion rates are achieved.
• Handle routine queries from drivers over the sales element of the scheme.

The person

• Academically educated to A level/NVQ level 3 standard or relevant experience in a customer service environment or business administration.
• Knowledge and expertise gained through experience of working within the financial and/or transport/motor industry/staff benefit fields or a customer service related industry.
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft Office packages.
• Knowledge or experience of working with databases.
• Ability to retain and recall large amounts of data and information relating to drivers, vehicle types, lease expiry dates etc. This enables the post holder to deal quickly and efficiently with multiple transactions and problems.
• Good communication skills are essential both orally and written.
• The ability to plan and organise ongoing tasks.
• Can analyse and rectify often complex discrepancies/errors between order values/invoices, costs and user contributions.
• Can meet tight deadlines with a high degree of accuracy e.g. Insurance declaration, lease renewals, payroll deadlines.
• Strong team player.
• Proven track record of dealing with salary sacrifice queries.
• Proven track record of working in a role dealing with a high volume of telephone calls.