Senior Customer Service Advisor - Legal Aid Agency

Job Description

We are an executive agency of the [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal] ([Employer hidden — sign up to reveal]). We are responsible for operationally administering the legal aid fund to provide criminal and civil legal aid advice to people in England and Wales. Our people are at the heart of achieving excellence. Employing around 1,200 colleagues across England and Wales, we feel proud to have some of the best People Survey results in the Civil Service.

The Case Management team is central to the Agency, it is responsible for handling legal aid applications, processing case payments and dealing with correspondence and enquiries received in both Civil and Criminal Legal aid matters. Our dedicated staff ensure that 600,000 new clients access justice each year, while ensuring that legal aid lawyers are paid fairly.

The Civil Customer Service Team support users and providers of civil legal aid. This means we regularly work with members of the public in receipt of or applying for legal aid and solicitors in the process of providing legal services to publicly funded clients. The Civil Customer Service Team supports this by responding to customer queries, processing urgent casework, and resolving customer complaints.

Job Summary: To provide exceptional levels of customer service by answering incoming calls, dealing with customer correspondence, responding to customer complaints and complex queries. Providing support and feedback to colleagues to ensure quality standards are maintained and customer interactions result in appropriate solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Communicate effectively with all customers, including providers of Legal Aid (Solicitors & Advocates), members of the public and other stakeholders.
• Resolve an agreed percentage of queries at first point of contact.
• Manage own call time and after call work time effectively to ensure that these are within agreed tolerances.
• Processing applications and amendments in relation to Civil Legal Aid proceedings, interpreting and applying guidance and regulations to make accurate decisions.
• Provide a referral point for more complex calls / queries. Take personal ownership of all contact, ensuring successful resolution.
• Carry out quality control on calls and feedback the results to colleagues to enable improvements.
• Identify areas for improvement and set up necessary corrective action, including group training and development sessions.
• Take an active role in promoting consistency.
• Review, develop and improve guidance and processes. Make suggestions for best practice in all areas of work covered by the team.
• Identifying trends on errors, delays and duplication of effort and work to reduce the number of calls from providers through education.
• Deal effectively with a full range of customer complaints and capture customer feedback, using this feedback to improve what we do.
• Plan resources to deal with the expected level of calls and other work for the team and provide accurate statistical data.
• Take a leading role in meetings and champion collaborative working with a variety of teams.
• Ensure all data is processed accurately, securely and in accordance with LAA data security guidelines.

Essential Knowledge, Experience and Skills

• Ability to communicate clearly and effectively using questioning and active listening to fully understand and provide a ‘right first time’ resolution to customer calls / queries.
• Established organisational and prioritisation skills, demonstrating the ability to work independently to meet challenging deadlines.
• Effective use of customer service skills to handle difficult calls and callers whilst maintaining the expected standards and timeframes.
• Work cooperatively with others to ensure adequate staffing on customer service telephone lines at all times.
• Effective communication skills, both written and verbal, dealing with both external and internal stakeholders.
• Ability to gather and analyse call data for forecasting and management reporting.

Desirable Knowledge, Experience and Skills

• A comprehensive knowledge of the LAA and their current guidance and regulations relating to processing applications and its application in the online management system (CCMS).
• Knowledge of Civil Legal Aid
• Ability to lead meetings and facilitate discussions to encourage collaborative working.
• Knowledge of Continuous Improvement techniques

Additional Information

The [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal] offers Hybrid Working arrangements where business need allows. This is an informal, non-contractual form of flexible working that blends working from your base location, different [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal] sites and / or from home. All employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office, subject to local estate capacity.

The [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal] offers a range of benefits including annual leave, pension, training, and family friendly policies. For more information on applying, please contact [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal] or the recruitment team at [Employer hidden — sign up to reveal].