Hi, it’s Emilie. Over the past two weeks I have been getting very involved in Customer Services. At Pamoja we call this “School Services”, as we focus on supporting all of the schools we work with. We deal with all sorts of things, from processing feedback to helping students who are transferring schools. It’s amazing to see how well students, SBCs (Site-based Coordinators) and teachers communicate with each other even though they are in completely different places around the world.
As James mentioned last week, no one likes horrible customer service. It is great that he is working to improve the customer service system. It is also very important to have the right people to operate the system and deal with customers and I have to say that the Pamoja School Services team are great! They have been incredibly helpful in introducing me to all aspects of the department. They are really friendly and helpful to customers and very quick in replying.
As I said in the first blog, I study International Business Management and although it’s a broad course I have never studied anything about customer service. I’m sure you have a little bit of an idea what goes on in customer service, however, much more goes on than I thought at first! School Services are at the heart of the business, as customer satisfaction and experience are incredibly important to Pamoja. However, in School Services I am not only working with my team and the customers, I work with many people within Pamoja. School Services are closely linked with every department in the business. Therefore, it is great that I start in this department, because I immediately have to work with many colleagues.
I have not only been working in School Services, I hop from department to department at times if someone needs help. Technical Development have been working on developing new Orientation Courses and us interns have been testing them for Quality Assurance. When I was testing these courses, I learned about benefits of the online classroom that I had not thought of before. For example, if you have a class discussion, it’s online, so the whole discussion is saved. This means that when it comes to revision time, you can look back at class discussions, whilst in a normal classroom most students will have long forgotten what was discussed months ago. Us interns have also been sitting in on many meetings to get involved in the exciting projects Pamoja is working on, and it is incredibly interesting to see how projects are planned and how motivated everyone is to make it work.
Overall, I am still enjoying myself! It is great working in such a friendly environment, with friendly colleagues, fun social events and always lots of food around! The temptation to eat cookies and cakes all day is big! That’s it from me!
Emilie – Pamoja Intern Programme, BA International Business Management Undergraduate at Oxford Brookes University
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