UK

VTCT Skills · RQF Level 1

VTCT Skills Level 1 Certificate in Principles of Customer Service (RQF)

You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.

  • LevelRQF Level 1
  • Total credits13
  • Guided learning109 hours
  • Units in this qualification20

Awarded by VTCT Skills · on the Ofqual register

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What you’ll learn

What each unit actually teaches you to do

VTCT Skills Level 1 Certificate in Principles of Customer Service (RQF) Overview Structure Documents Approved Centres Qualification Information Sector: Business, Retail and First Aid VTCT Product Code: CSC01 Qualification Number: 600/4940/6 Level: 1 GLH: 109 UK Price (for VTCT centres only): £41.00 * Units: 6 - 12 Minimum Credits: 13 Category: Customer Service Age Restriction: 5 Registration End Date: * The price displayed is for training providers only. If you are a learner, please consult a training provider for course prices. Additional Information Documentation for this qualification last amended 08 May 2025 Qualification Information The Level 1 Certificate in Principles of Customer Service (RQF) is designed to allow you to learn, develop and practise the skills and knowledge required for employment within the customer service sector, from call centres and banks to hair salons. This qualification covers the skills and knowledge required by you to deliver reliable customer service through an understanding of: customer expectations and needs the delivery of customer service in line with organisational procedures dealing effectively with customer queries, problems and complaints This qualification does not require you to have any prior qualifications or levels of prior learning. There is no minimum age requirement for this qualification. If you feel that you only need a basic understanding of customer service then you could chose to do the Level 1 Award in Principles of Cust

These are the units VTCT Skills registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.

Answer telephone calls from customersReal unit · VTCT Skills
It teaches you to effectively answer telephone calls from customers by demonstrating appropriate greetings, using a professional tone, and responding to customer requests. You'll develop skills in active listening and clarifying customer needs during telephone interactions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Greet customers politely and professionally when answering telephone calls.
  • Effectively deal with incoming telephone calls from customers, addressing their needs and providing appropriate assistance.
  • Respond appropriately to requests made by customers during telephone conversations.
Apply legislation, regulation and organisational procedures for customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll understand and apply relevant legislation, regulations, and organisational procedures in customer service. This includes protecting property and information, adhering to security protocols, and complying with health and safety requirements to ensure secure and lawful service delivery.

What you'll be able to do

  • Consistently follow established customer service procedures relevant to a particular job role.
  • Protect the security of both property and information while delivering customer service, adhering to relevant protocols.
  • Know the essential health and safety requirements that must be observed when delivering customer service to ensure a safe environment.
  • Know other external rules, regulations, and legal requirements that impact on the delivery of customer service, such as data protection or consumer rights.
Communicate customers’ problems with othersReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll learn to collect, log, and communicate customer problems effectively with colleagues. The unit covers questioning techniques, summarising issues, recording information accurately, and maintaining clear communication between customers and team members.

What you'll be able to do

  • Collect information about a problem from a customer, using effective questioning techniques
  • Log information about a customer problem accurately and completely
  • Select relevant information about a customer problem to pass to a colleague, ensuring they have the necessary details
  • Communicate effectively with both a customer and a colleague about the problem, maintaining clear and professional communication
Communicate effectively with customersReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit provides learners with an understanding of effective communication with customers, focusing on clear speech, active listening, and appropriate language use. You'll appreciate how these skills contribute to good customer service and customer satisfaction.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know the importance of speaking clearly and using appropriate language when communicating with customers.
  • Know the importance of listening actively to customers to understand their needs and concerns.
  • Know the importance of using information obtained from customers to contribute to the provision of good customer service.
Contribute to effective customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll gain foundational knowledge of customer service terminology, concepts, and factors contributing to effective service delivery. The unit also covers teamwork within customer service environments to support organisational objectives.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know and understand common customer service terms and language used in the workplace.
  • Know what factors contribute to the delivery of good customer service within an organisation.
  • Work effectively and collaboratively with colleagues as part of a customer service team.
Create a good impression to customersReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit equips learners with the ability to present a professional appearance and relate effectively to customers. You'll learn to select appropriate clothing, maintain personal hygiene, and demonstrate behaviours that create a positive customer impression.

What you'll be able to do

  • Select and wear clothing that is appropriate for a customer service role, adhering to any dress code requirements.
  • Present a professional and well-maintained appearance suitable for interacting with customers.
  • Communicate and build rapport effectively with customers, demonstrating empathy and understanding.
Deal with queries and requestsReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll gain knowledge of the services and products offered by a department and develop skills to clarify and address customer queries and requests effectively. The unit focuses on understanding customer interests to provide accurate information and solutions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know the range of services and products offered by a specific section or department within an organisation.
  • Understand the typical interests and needs of customers in relation to the services and products offered.
  • Accurately clarify customer queries and requests to ensure a clear understanding of their needs.
  • Effectively deal with customer queries and requests in a professional and timely manner.
Effective relationships with customers and colleaguesReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit covers how to build effective relationships with customers and colleagues by demonstrating empathy, understanding customer needs, and using positive body language. You'll explore collabouration and mutual support within customer service teams to enhance communication and teamwork.

What you'll be able to do

  • Relate effectively to customers, demonstrating empathy, understanding, and a customer-focused approach.
  • Relate effectively to colleagues within a customer service team, fostering collaboration and mutual support.
  • Know the importance of using positive body language when interacting with both customers and colleagues to create a favourable impression and enhance communication.
Handling telephone calls from customersReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit covers how to handle telephone calls from customers professionally, including appropriate greetings, managing enquiries, and resolving communication problems. You'll understand the importance of prompt, clear, and courteous telephone interactions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Greet customers politely and professionally when answering telephone calls.
  • Deal effectively with different types of customer enquiries and requests received via telephone.
  • Deal with communication problems that may arise during telephone conversations with customers.
Introduction to customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit introduces learners to fundamental customer service concepts, terminology, and processes. You'll understand key stages of customer service and reflect on personal experiences to improve their service delivery skills.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know and understand basic customer service terminology and concepts.
  • Understand the customer service process, including its key stages and overall importance to an organisation.
  • Reflect on and learn from personal experiences of providing or receiving customer service.
Legislation, regulation and procedures to follow in customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit provides learners with knowledge of legislation, regulations, and organisational procedures relevant to customer service roles. You'll understand security protocols, health and safety rules, data protection, and external regulations to ensure responsible and compliant service delivery.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know organisational procedures for customer service, adhering to established protocols
  • Protect the security of property and information when delivering customer service, maintaining confidentiality and preventing loss or damage
  • Know the health and safety rules that relate to a customer service job, ensuring a safe working environment for themselves and customers
  • Know the relevant external rules in a customer service job, complying with legal and regulatory requirements
Positive communication with customersReal unit · VTCT Skills
It teaches you to communicate positively with customers by holding conversations using clear and respectful language. You'll respond accurately to requests and use appropriate body language to demonstrate attentiveness and professionalism in customer interactions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Hold conversations with customers, using appropriate language and tone
  • Respond to requests from customers, providing accurate and helpful information
  • Use appropriate body language when dealing with customers, demonstrating attentiveness and professionalism
Record and communicate customer problemsReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll learn to collect detailed information from customers experiencing problems, accurately record this information, and communicate it effectively to colleagues and customers. The unit emphasises active listening and clear communication techniques.

What you'll be able to do

  • Collect detailed information from a customer who is experiencing a problem.
  • Record detailed information accurately about a customer's problem.
  • Communicate details of a customer's problem clearly to a colleague.
  • Communicate details of a customer's problem clearly to the customer.
The customer service experienceReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll explore the elements that contribute to a positive customer service experience, including politeness, efficiency, and helpfulness. The unit emphasises the importance of first impressions and maintaining a welcoming environment to achieve customer satisfaction.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know about the different elements that contribute to a positive customer service experience.
  • Know how customer satisfaction is achieved through effective customer service practices.
  • Demonstrate a positive and helpful attitude when dealing with customers in various situations.
The customer service job roleReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit provides learners with an understanding of the customer service job role, including the delivery of good service, entry-level job requirements, and potential career progression. You'll identify necessary skills and qualities for success in customer service roles.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know what the delivery of good customer service involves.
  • Know the requirements of an entry level customer service job.
  • Know the outline of a job involving customer service that may be accessible after gaining experience at entry level.
The importance of appearance and behaviour in customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
This unit provides learners with knowledge of the importance of appearance and behaviour in customer service roles. You'll understand dress code requirements, personal hygiene, and grooming, and how these factors influence customer perceptions and professional interactions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know the dress requirements applicable to various customer service roles.
  • Understand how general appearance can influence customer perceptions and reactions.
  • Interact effectively and professionally with customers in a customer service environment.
Understand how to deal with queries and requestsReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll gain an understanding of how to deal with customer queries and requests by recognising different types of questions and clarifying details. The unit covers knowledge of organisational services or products and effective communication to address customer needs accurately.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know the range of services or products offered by a specific section or department within an organisation.
  • Know the common types of questions that customers are likely to ask regarding the services or products.
  • Recognise and identify when a customer presents a query or request.
  • Clarify the specific details of queries or requests received from customers to ensure accurate understanding.
Work in a customer-friendly wayReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll learn to work in a customer-friendly manner by demonstrating politeness, willingness, and adaptability in communication. The unit emphasises consideration for customer needs and feelings across various situations to improve interaction quality.

What you'll be able to do

  • Demonstrate a polite and willing approach when interacting with customers, showing a positive attitude and a desire to help.
  • Interact effectively with customers in a variety of different situations, adapting communication style and approach as needed.
  • Demonstrate consideration for customers' needs and feelings, showing empathy and understanding in all interactions.
Working in a customer focused wayReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll understand how to demonstrate a customer-focused approach by showing politeness, willingness, and consideration in interactions. The unit highlights the importance of empathy, appropriate language, and tone when communicating with customers.

What you'll be able to do

  • Show a polite and willing approach to customers.
  • Show consideration to customers.
Working in customer serviceReal unit · VTCT Skills
You'll gain an understanding of customer service principles and their application in customer-related roles. This includes recognising the importance of customer-focused approaches, job responsibilities, and potential career progression within customer service.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the fundamental customer service principles that underpin customer-facing roles.
  • Understand the specific responsibilities of a job holder in meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
  • Know the general characteristics and requirements of entry-level customer service positions.
  • Know the potential career progression opportunities within customer service that become accessible with experience.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

Your passport

Every credit is a stamp you keep

Level 1 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.

Answer telephone calls from customersApply legislation, regulation and organisational procedures for customer serviceCommunicate customers’ problems with othersCommunicate effectively with customersContribute to effective customer serviceCreate a good impression to customersDeal with queries and requestsEffective relationships with customers and colleagues

Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.

Who’d teach you this

The Evidence Evaluator

Assessor

Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.

Meet all twelve tutors

Where this connects

Where these credits take you

A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.

Where this can lead

Associate Service Trainer

Your journey starts here. We're looking for someone with a spark, a desire to help others, and a willingness to learn. If you're ready to roll up your sleeves and build a career in training, we'd love to hear from you. This isn't just a job; it's a chance to shape how our agents serve our customers, and that's pretty powerful.

See the whole journey →
Opens the roleAssociate Service TrainerOne of the jobs this qualification is a route intoSee the role →Future FluencyAll ten future skillsSee how every unit is contextualised by the tenExplore →

How you’ll actually learn this

One-to-one, on your own real work

A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.

One-to-one, on your real workNo lectures, no past-papers. Every unit is practised on the actual tasks your job throws at you, a tutor beside you, not a video in front of you.
Taught to the top, not the testMost courses stop at remembering. Your companion keeps climbing: analysing, judging, creating. That’s the part a machine can’t do for you.
Credits you keep, a map that continuesEvery unit is regulated and yours for good. The day you finish, Zavmo already knows the next role your new credits open.
Answer telephone calls from customersLevel 1

Applied to your work in any of these jobs

Which job do you mean?
Associate Service Trainer

This unit enables learners to effectively answer telephone calls from customers by demonstrating appropriate greetings, using a professional tone, and responding to customer requests. Learners will develop skills in active listening and clarifying customer needs during telephone interactions.

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.
Your PlanIllustration

Built for VTCT Skills Level 1 Certificate in Principles of Customer Service (RQF)

20 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by VTCT Skills.

  1. Answer telephone calls from customers
  2. Apply legislation, regulation and organisational procedures for customer service
  3. Communicate customers’ problems with others
  4. Communicate effectively with customers
  5. Contribute to effective customer service
  6. Create a good impression to customers

and 14 more in the full unit list below.

These are the real units of this credential, in its own order. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

Why it sticks

Most courses stop at remembering

There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.

  1. 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
  2. 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
  3. 4AnalyseThe Analyst
  4. 3ApplyThe Coach
  5. 2UnderstandThe Connector
  6. 1RememberThe Builder

Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you

Why this matters: AI can already remember and understand for you. What it can’t do is take your real problem and judge the right call. So the only learning worth paying for is the learning that takes you to the top. That’s exactly what a tutor doing it with you, on your real work, is for.

The value

Why the companion is worth £70 a month

You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.

That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.

Earned on your own work, taught to the top.

Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.

Build my plan, free

No card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.