Customer Services Officer (Weekends)

We're looking for a Customer Services Officer to join Your Place and be part of our dedicated team to help us with our mission to solve homelessness in east London, one person at a time!

About the role

This role provides a high quality first point of contact for residents and other callers contacting or visiting the organisation, dealing with a broad range of housing management, property maintenance and repairs enquiries, providing accurate and timely information and documentation when needed.

This role will also assist colleagues in providing an efficient and responsive service to residents and visitors, providing administrative support, and creating or maintaining records as required.

Salary : £27,082-28,000 annual salary 
Contract : Permanent 
Hours:  1 Part-time role 12 hours on Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday
Location : 81 Barking road, Canning Town 

Start date: As soon as possible

Other responsibilities include

• To provide a professional and friendly reception service to visitors, dealing with enquiries and preparing refreshments for visitors as appropriate.
• To deal with and respond to customer enquiries on a range of housing, and repair issues, including:
• Rents, Accommodation and service charges: answer routine queries, provide general advice on payment and arrears issues, print and hand out account statements, etc.
• Repairs and maintenance: answer general enquiries, take repair requests, place works orders, monitor job completion, general liaison with residents, contractors and colleagues on progress approve repair invoices, etc.
• Housing waiting list applications: provide advice on how to apply for accommodation, send out and register application forms, etc.
• Tenure issues: answer routine enquiries and provide general advice, send out guidance leaflets, log reports of nuisance and anti-social behaviour and CCIA on Inform
• To sign post and or book appointments for residents to meet up with their keyworkers if query is to do with their support.
• To ensure that detailed information is obtained from residents, updating records and keeping accurate records of customer contacts, including complaints.
• To book appointments for both Housing and Revenue team if query can’t be dealt with
• To assist the welcome team when required to log, acknowledge and distribute incoming post and to ensure outgoing post is franked and posted.
• To assist the welcome team when required to answer and deal with telephone and e-mail enquiries; filtering and passing telephone calls and e-mails through to colleagues as appropriate.
• To provide reports to the core, complex and Hope street teams on resident movements and incidents over weekends.
• To help with the sign out of keys and viewing of CCTV as instructed by Senior Customer Service Officers or the Team Leader.
• To provide administrative support to teams in the Resident Services Department as required.
• To maintain and update central records, including on formal complaints, antisocial behaviour reports, waiting list applications, response times to correspondence, and provide performance reports as required.
• To ensure that maximum use is made of IT systems, supporting the development of information systems to enhance the service provided.
• Work alongside residents and team members across the organisation to improve customer experience.
• To carry out all daily and weekly health and safety checks and report these according to CAH policy and procedure
• To assist with evacuations as fire wardens
• To receive cash payments from residents, record them accordingly and complete end of shift readings in line with finance policies and procedures.
• To attend meetings internally as and when necessary, for example, Directorate, Management and planning meetings.
• To undertake such other duties within the competence of the post holder which may be required from time to time.

About you

Experience

• Experience of office administration systems
• Understanding and experience of working in a customer focused environment
• Experience of working as part of a team and also working independently
• Experience of working with software applications including Microsoft office and bespoke IT Systems.

Skills & knowledge

• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to meet deadlines and prioritise workloads.
• Able to take ownership and deliver excellent customer service in a professional and confident manner

Abilities

• Demonstrate a positive, flexible approach to team working.
• Ability to communicate with residents and colleagues effectively.
• Ability to provide customer focussed and responsive services.
• Ability to organise and prioritise own workload with minimum supervision.
• Ability to understand and meet the needs of customers to ensure excellent customer service.
• Ability to understand community issues as well as current housing issues.
• Ability to communicate and work effectively with other agencies
• Ability to prepare and present information concisely and clearly and adapt communication for a range of audiences, including the ability to influence, negotiate and persuade.

Personal qualities

• Willingness to work flexible hours to meet the needs of the service
• Patient and pro-active
• Demonstrate a positive attitude towards your own development including embracing the personal development review process
• Commitment to the values of diversity and inclusion
• Demonstrate a positive attitude and ability to look for solutions and opportunities in a changing environment

Desirable criteria

• Housing qualification or similar, or willing to undertake these qualifications.

At Your Place, we are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know through experience that the different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better resident outcomes. We welcome applications irrespective of peoples age, disability, sex, gender, identity and gender expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability.

This post is subject to an Enhanced DBS check and a right to work in the UK.