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School's Out for Summer!

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Five9

Five9 is a leading provider of cloud contact center software for the digital enterprise, bringing the power of cloud innovation to customers and facilitating more than three billion customer interactions annually.

Blog post by Jack Plant, UK Work Experience Student 

JackIn England, year 10 school children, like me, are encouraged to find themselves a two-week ‘work experience’ placement. It’s not an option, because if you don’t find anything then the school could find something for you! Luckily, my dad found a way to get me a placement at the company he works for: Five9

I was going to spend two weeks shadowing the International VP of Partner Sales, Thomas John! Before I started, I made sure I had some smart clothes; I did a little bit of Googling around who Five9 were and what they do (contact centre software which helps improve ‘customer experience’), and to be honest, I was totally confused. That’s probably why on Day 1, I was very nervous. It was all new and I didn’t really understand what was expected.  

I soon found out that I had no reason to be worried at all. Thomas is a very charismatic man, and as a dad himself, was very understanding.  I captured the whole of the first day and my feelings in this LinkedIn blog

Week One

I spent the next few days really digging into how a modern company like Five9 functions. They can’t do everything themselves, so they have a network of Business Partners, like Babble, to help. I found out how hard these partners work with Five9ers to find opportunities for their Sales and Marketing teams to work on. I discovered that it’s not just hard work though; we had an awesome lunch and then I found out more about how social media and digital marketing help them reach new customers. There is more on that here.  

I had an experience with an exploding burrito in London and went to a sales meeting where Thomas presented the Business Partner strategy to the whole UK Sales force. Each day,my confidence grew a little because I had to introduce myself in meetings and on calls. There are a lot of calls. 

Week Two

In the second week, I spent time with Thomas John again, learned a lot about how Cloud Computing works in exactly the same way as most gaming platforms. I understand PoPs (point of presence) now. I met loads of great teams from other business partners and different countries. I was starting to really enjoy myself. 

I spoke at an event hosted by Telarus on HMS Belfast. I travelled to London by train and even ended up speaking in front of the audience just to introduce myself and that was a great experience. And then, it basically was all over.  

What I Know Now 

It had gone by in a flash and I’d learned a ton about customer contact centres, customer service, cloud computing and how modern companies work. Also, I picked up loads of career advice and spent a load of time with the sales and marketing teams, as well as some of the more technical people.  

Here are my top 5 tips for anyone who wants to do a similar placement in the future: 

  1. Work is very tiring, especially when you are going to a placement where everything is new. Get lots of sleep and early nights. 

  2. Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand something. Everyone I met wanted to help me. 

  3. Be yourself! Everyone was curious to find out about me and really enjoyed my posts. 

  4. Check whether you can use social media. I could and it really helped me make new friends at work. I did have to get my posts checked though and it was great to see how it’s used at work. 

  5. Keep a diary. It went by very quickly and keeping a diary like I did really helps you to look back! 

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Five9

Five9 is a leading provider of cloud contact center software for the digital enterprise, bringing the power of cloud innovation to customers and facilitating more than three billion customer interactions annually.

Call 1-800-553-8159 to learn more about Five9