As part of Hallgarten’s Head Start Apprenticeship scheme, inaugural recruit, Amica Zago, spent her first three months at Hallgarten learning the ropes in the Customer Services Team. Reflecting on her time in the team, Amica sees the three months as the ideal start in the business. The Head Start scheme is an 18 month long programme to develop the future talent of the wine industry, providing a 360-degree perspective of the wine sector from vineyard to table.

After graduating from Plumpton College (University of Brighton) with a 2:1 in Wine Business, I was very fortunate to find the job of my dreams within the industry. Even better, it’s an 18-month Graduate Apprenticeship Programme lled “Head Start”, allowing me to work and learn from each department across all of the business.

After the first 10 months I will have gained experience within Customer Service, Marketing, Finance, Logistics and National Accounts teams. I will then be spending a month abroad with one of our major suppliers working through the harvest season, returning to Luton and joining the Sales team for the last six months of the apprenticeship.

Andrew Bewes: “Nurturing the future talent of the wine industry is essential to the development of the sector we work in and it is our responsibility to help guide these individuals to the next level. We devised the Head Start programme to give apprentices the tools to be able to embrace any aspect of the sector we work in and provide added value to customers.”

After completing an internship with the company in the summer of 2018, in September 2019 I was excited to be back and was warmly welcomed back into the company and introduced to my new supervisor. Within the first few hours I had settled in, now knowing there was nothing to fear, I was definitely starting to enjoy this new opportunity. Now three months into the role, I’ve just finished working within the Customer Service Team (CST) and have to say what a lovely team to be in: fun and so knowledgeable!

Having now completed my secondment within CST, I realise how starting out as a Customer Service Advisor gives you great insight into the company, learning the diverse and exciting wine list and being able to understand how the Customer Service and Delivery Teams aid the sales organisation, ensuring that customers are able to receive their orders within their requested time window – I never thought customers would have such precise delivery slots!

The main role of a Customer Service Advisor is to input all the orders, these are received via email and phone, and come from both the Sales Representatives and customers directly. This does mean that you’re constantly multitasking between the PC and phone calls… at times I was liaising with other teams within the business one minute, perhaps talking to the delivery team, and then on the phone to a customer – you need to keep a cool and level head at all times. The role has definitely improved the way I interact, both spoken and written and raised my confidence levels immensely.

I have known for a while that my dream job within the wine industry is to become a Sales Representative, working in Customer Service has taught me a lot about how important it will be to have a really good working rapport with the back office. Now I know what information I need to provide to ensure CST have everything they need, I’m sure that my orders always go through smoothly! Without them and their great work, my future customers will be on the phone to me complaining – and that’s not what anyone wants!

And now, on to marketing… I’ll be back with another blog soon…