Alastair Mak tells us about what skills you need to be a Customer Insight Graduate
Alastair Mak
When I was studying mathematics at university, I often wondered how what I was learning would be useful in the big wide world, seeing as I didn’t want to go into research, or teaching.
The skills that I learned at university have proved essential in both of my placements so far. One of the projects I am currently working on is reducing the number of duplicate records in our databases. This benefits our customers, because it makes any call to British Gas much smoother, and it also benefits our agents, by making it easier for them to find the correct customer information. In many cases, the customer’s details are scattered across several records – I am looking to merge these cases.
My logical, structured approach to solving problems has been crucial here, as I have sought to assess the impact of this project across many areas of the business. I have worked alongside very technical colleagues in IS (Information Systems), as well as those in our Credit Risk and Digital teams, which has required me to learn quickly and understand complex processes thoroughly.
As a badminton team captain at university, I placed high importance on building strong relationships with those in my team, as well as the wider community in the club. Continuing this in the workplace has been simple, and has really helped me to learn, strengthen working relationships and make change happen.
The overall objective of Customer Insight is to bring the customer to the heart of decision making, though there are many different skill sets required for this. Regardless of whether you’re technically minded or not, if you have an interest in understanding and helping our customers, you should consider applying to the Customer Insight graduate scheme.
Find out more about Centrica's Graduate and Undergraduate schemes here.