Apprentice Stars de
Joel Matthewman, Thomas Cook, Wombwell
8.30am: Our manager Sarah talks us through our daily and weekly targets, allocates duties and goes through any new campaigns and how we communicate those to our customers.
As we celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, we caught up with our three Apprentice Rising Stars and asked them to talk us through how a typical day looks for them
9am: The shop opens and we have different responsibilities. We are all dual-skilled, so on some days I’ll be responsible for opening up the foreign exchange. Otherwise I’ll go through my emails and deal with any outstanding queries and invoices. We’ll also check our social media accounts. Our shop has 2,000 likes on our Facebook page so it’s a really important way to communicate with our customers. During the morning I’ll be dealing with enquiries from customers. Sarah will greet them and pass them on to whoever’s available. I deal with different queries, but I have a strong knowledge of our branded hotel product, so I’m confident dealing with those. We have brochure racks, particularly for specialist areas such as cruise and ski, and I find that a lot of customers still like to have something to look through and take away.
Apprenticeships in Focus
Travel Weekly’s Apprentice Rising Stars initiative forms part of our 2017-18 Apprenticeships in Focus series, run in association with headline sponsor Virgin Holidays.
The series has featured advice for companies taking on apprentices and those paying the apprenticeship levy, introduced in April 2017, and also included a special Travel Weekly Business Breakfast, where industry leaders discussed the changes and how they would be implemented.
To read previous features in the Apprenticeships in Focus series, head to
go.travelweekly.co.uk/ apprenticeships
1/2pm: After lunch I work on training and development for an hour. I’ll go onto Thomas Cook Academy online to check what tasks my assessor has set me, and I’ll then complete those and send them back to be reviewed. My learning and assessment is really varied – on some days I’ll be doing geography modules, and on others I’ll be doing e-learning on sectors and products or English or maths. The training is really flexible: we had lots of ski enquiries at the start of the year, so my assessor sorted out modules to help me build my understanding of the product.
PM: After my training, I’ll go back to my desk and catch up with ongoing queries and emails. I’ll also post deals on social media, which I really enjoy as you get lots of immediate response.
4pm: If I’m working on the banking side, I’ll make sure the numbers are correct and all the transactions are compliant, and we’ll make sure all the urgent conversations are dealt with. At the end of the day we make sure everything is tidy and the VCC (virtual call centre) system, which allows us to field calls from online queries, is turned off, and that’s the end of the day!
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travelweekly.co.uk 8 March 2018
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