The challenge
The Final Step provides SMEs with IT and cyber security support, tools and best practices, through a friendly and skilled service desk, proactive maintenance, and consultancy to help their clients deliver business goals.
As with any small company, recruitment can provide challenges and risk. The Final Step were seeking a solution that mitigated the risk of experiencing insufficient customer and employee satisfaction – which could in turn have a knock-on effect on the tech team’s morale.
The Final Step were looking to employ high-calibre apprentices who could apply the theory they learnt to their roles and deliver exceptional IT support service to their clients. It was also important to find an effective solution to help with the time-consuming recruitment and onboarding process.
The solution
The Final Step chose to partner with QA to understand the company’s challenges and provide them with the right support and knowledge.
As a company, The Final Step pride themselves on their training and development. A QA apprenticeship was a perfect fit; allowing their apprentices to learn and put their skills into practice while gaining a qualification.
QA placed one apprentice on the Network Engineer level 4 apprenticeship not only to address potential risk to customer and employer satisfaction, but to enhance The Final Step’s IT processes, increase the quality of service that’s provided to clients, and in turn improving their overall customer satisfaction. QA’s specialist training enabled the apprentices to be placed and hit the ground running, adding value from the get-go.
As well as placing an apprentice on the Network Engineer level 4 apprenticeship, The Final Step have hired a total of five apprentices over the years of working with QA. One such apprentice, Emre Giritli, was taken through the Level 4 Network Engineer apprenticeship, involving a balance of coursework, work experience and studying with the support of a dedicated skills coach. Emre has since progressed to become one of the company’s dedicated IT Security Engineers. He now provides invaluable support to both clients and the Senior IT Security team at The Final Step. Emre remains working at The Final Step to this day and is a fundamental part of the team.
The results speak for themselves through customer feedback. The company was able to retain clients and ensure customer satisfaction through its trained apprentices, with Emre being praised for “Excellent service”, “Willing to go the extra mile” and “The usual excellent service [customers] have come to expect from this company."
The outcome
The General Manager of The Final Step, Luisa Marques, commented they have now re-evaluated their onboarding, teaching and documentation practices since partnering with QA Apprenticeships, which in turn has benefited the whole company.
"We focus a lot more on in-depth teaching and verifying the information, which results in better service and happier clients as well as happier employees and ultimately a more profitable company. Thank you, QA, for being part of our story"
Luisa Marques, General Manager, The Final Step
The Final Step are continually growing and looking for exceptional talent to help them deliver quality IT support to their London-based clients. They told us that they will certainly be considering apprenticeships via QA this year!
See how we can help you
QA has helped over 35,000 apprentices over the last 10 years through our level 3-7 tech apprenticeship programmes. To find out more get in touch today.