One of the UK’s leading providers of housing, care and community services, Sanctuary Group employs around 13,000 people and manages more than 100,000 units of accommodation throughout England and Scotland, including general rented, retirement living, supported housing, student and key worker accommodation and care homes. Sanctuary also provides a range of other services including maintenance, care and telecare, all of which are delivered by our dedicated employees who are completely committed to customer service.
Customer Care Agent
- Housing
Customer Hub, Francis Street, Hull
£12,712
- £14,183 per year
25 hours per week (term time only) – Monday to Friday
We are seeking part time Customer Care Agents to join our Customer Hub team in Hull. The Customer Hub takes inbound customer calls relating to repairs, incidents and general housing queries. Sanctuary has around 120,000 properties ranging from General Rented Housing, Housing for older people, Homeownership, Student accommodation, Care & Supported sites and Commercial properties.
This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who is looking for the flexibility of working around school holidays. To ensure consistent pay throughout the year you will work 25 hours per week during term time, but your pay will be spread out equally each month.
Being on the front line isn’t always easy! Our Customer Hub team handles calls from minor water leaks to more urgent repairs such as no heating or hot water in a full block of flats for example. We also handle calls from customers who are looking for a property with Sanctuary, assisting with tenancy related issues and answering any housing related queries including Anti-Social Behaviour, so understandably our callers may be unhappy. We are looking for a particular type of person to be good at resolving complex customer queries and complaints.
Confidence, communication, emotional resilience and empathy – this is what it takes to be a great Customer Care Agent. With these skills, you can understand and respond well to the different ways that our customers can react, ensuring that they have a positive customer service journey.
Although this job can be challenging, every day is different and there is no better buzz than helping our customers by turning dissatisfaction into satisfaction.
The role of Customer Care Agent will include:
- Managing high volumes of both calls and emails and providing excellent customer service by concentrating on resolving the issues on the first contact where possible
- Liaising closely with our housing and maintenance teams to ensure that issues are resolved in a professional manner
- Having empathy and understanding when our customers may be upset or angry
- Listening out for wellbeing cues, to identify vulnerable customers and escalate to our regional teams or the welfare services, as/when appropriate
- Communicating with residents, staff and external agencies to investigate housing and maintenance related queries and complaints and provide a positive experience
- Ability to work to deadline and hit KPI’s
- Ability to spot potential for improvements and confidence to make suggestions
Skills and experiences:
- Previous experience in a customer service or contact centre role is essential, ideally handling inbound calls and emails
- You must also have a professional telephone manner and the ability to cope with a high volume of calls whilst remaining calm under pressure. If you’ve worked as an emergency call handler, you’ll have this down to a tee
- You must be able to handle different types of calls and email enquiries, adapting your style to our customers’ needs and be able to navigate computer systems
- Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise your own workload, as well as working as part of a team towards shared targets and KPIs
- A positive attitude, a can-do approach and great communication skills
- Experience of managing a variety of complex enquiries
Why work for us?
Sanctuary Housing is one of the UK’s leading social landlords, providing around 120,000 homes across England and Scotland. We give our residents good quality, affordable homes in communities that they can be proud of. As part of a not-for-profit organisation, we reinvest any surplus we make back into the local communities we serve.
Our Benefits
As part of our commitment to making Sanctuary a great place to work, where your wellbeing is of genuine importance, we have developed an attractive employment package. The package recognises your contribution, supports your physical, mental and financial health and gives you the flexibility to tailor your employee benefits by offering:
- A pension scheme with employer contributions from Sanctuary
- Life Assurance
- Employee Advice Service including counselling
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Voluntary health plans
- Employee discounts
- Wellbeing support and tools
- Employee recognition scheme
- Role salary is £12,712 (rising to £14,183 including an additional policy allowance per annum after 12 months, subject to satisfactory performance)
Please note – The full-time equivalent salary for this role is £27,118 based on 40 hours per week, (rising to £28,546 with an additional policy allowance of £1712 per year after 12 months, subject to satisfactory performance, pro rata)
Closing Date: 22 December 2024
We reserve the right depending on application numbers to close or extend the closing dates for positions; we would therefore recommend an early application.
‘For an insight into what it’s like to work for us, take a look at #LifeatSanctuary on Twitter’
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme
Disability Confident
About Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident .