Customer Services Representative and Semi-Pro Cyclist
Standard Life

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Jenny D

 

My name’s Jenny D, I’m a Customer Service Representative for Standard Life, and also a semi-pro cyclist. Well I work in endowments area for Standard Life and basically we’re the kind of front line for all the customers. What helped me get the job in here was the work experience that I gained during, and after I left university. I did health psychology at uni, it served me in other aspects, with my sporting life, but in terms of a career it’s probably not somewhere I want to eventually end up in. I seem to have a bit of a spark from different marketing stuff, so hopefully when the opportunities right, Standard Life will be able to help me shift into the career that I’ve shown some aptitude for over the last couple of years.

I was kind of middle of the road with my grades, I got all the highers that I wanted, I wasn’t a grade A student, I got on well with all my teachers and did all right. At the time I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, I worked in the local Spar shop, through until I think I was sixteen. When I finished school I worked in Argos for a year and then when I was at university I worked for visitscotland.com, which was the tourist board for Scotland.

My Mum’s a teacher, my Dad used to be an engineer for BT, but they’ve been very, very supportive of me, but they’ve let myself and my sisters make our own decisions, make our own mistakes. Because I’ve been doing sport since I was a young age, I’m quite a focused individual. I had lots of ups and downs, I think one of the first things the club coaches at my cycling club said to me was get ready to lose a lot because you have to learn your trade with it and the bike doesn’t have any breaks and it doesn’t have any gears and there’s a lot of fast people on a velodrome. I really, really like pushing it on all levels, pushing for success is a big motivation for me. So I went out to Delhi, I set three goals, duo personal bests in the three events that I had, come back with a medal in the team sprint discipline and go fast enough that GB would put me on their squad as a kind of fast-track athlete for London. Out of the three I set, two of them I achieved, one of them I didn’t, but I re-assessed and arranged to do a GB trial with the national coach, six months after Delhi. If it doesn’t work out for London, we’ve got the Commonwealth games in Glasgow in 2014.

Well I train six days a week, with one day off and my sessions are, say, forty-five minutes to an hour and a half depending on what I’m doing, so it’s not because I’m a sprint based athlete, fortunately all my events are nice and short!

Right up until, probably, weeks before Delhi I didn’t have any funding, I had a £300 bike that, when I put full gas through, creaked, and I was like thinking, is this going to snap? Once it had kind of been confirmed that I had been selected for Delhi, my company, Standard Life, stepped in and they were able to provide the funding for me to be able to purchase the bike and any other additional equipment that I had, or rather I needed at the time. And the support I’ve had for my own career and my cycling career, from Standard Life, I couldn’t have asked for any more. I get a really good response from everyone in the office and right from, like, people in my office that I work with on a daily basis, right up to the Chief Exec. The prospect of having a Commonwealth Games in Scotland, is huge for all the UK athletes, but the Scottish athletes in particular. There’s going to be three opportunities for me to get medals in Glasgow, and I want to be pushing for gold in at least one of them, so that I can sing the national anthem for Scotland, with a full velodrome with Scottish people in it. So that’s a big incentive for me to stay in the sport.

Jenny works on the ‘front line’ at Standard Life helping customers get the right service. She has an interest in marketing and hopes to move over to a more focused role in the future. She’s enjoyed sports from a very young age and cycling is something that she’s always been passionate about. She’d loved to get to the 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games and is training six days a week to get there. Standard Life have sponsored her in her cycling career.

More information about Customer service managers and supervisors

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£34,320
average salary

The UK average salary is £29,813

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33
average weekly hours

There are 37.5 hours in the average working week

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50%  male 
50%  female 

The UK workforce is 47% female and 53% male

Future employment

Future employment?

Description
? Job holders in this unit group plan, organise and co-ordinate resources necessary for receiving and dealing with the responses, complaints or further requirements of purchasers and users of a product or service, and supervise customer service occupations.
Qualifications
There are no pre-set entry requirements. Candidates are recruited with a variety of academic qualifications and/or relevant experience. Specialist qualifications may be required for work within certain sectors.
Tasks
  • Develops and implements policies and procedures to deal effectively with customer requirements and complaints;
  • Co-ordinates and controls the work of those within customer services departments;
  • Discusses customer responses with other managers with a view to improving the product or service provided;
  • Plans and co-ordinates the operations of help and advisory services to provide support for customers and users.
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Employment activities 23238
Retail trade 22990
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Services to buildings 11433
Legal & accounting 10787
Wholesale trade 9017
Financial services 7240
Computer programming, etc 5753
Auxiliary  services 5547
Sport & recreation 4876
Employment status
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