What I Have Learned from My Internship

I became an intern at a popular English learning institute in Shenzhen this summer holiday. The institute is intended for not only children but also adults who are looking for online English learning. Online learning is a popular trend in recent years for its convenience, because more and more Chinese seek to learn English for better opportunities to study abroad or find a better job requiring language skills, but they are too busy to go to brick-and-mortar centers.

Looking back on the two-month internship, I still can remember how I felt when I first stepped into the office with my GDUFS schoolmates: nervous, but excited.

As interns, we were expected to experience different jobs except being teachers – the teachers are specially selected from all over the world and well-trained. Therefore, we were supposed to do network marketing and telephone marketing. Given our needed comprehensive abilities, we were also required to write promotion articles online, make project plans, and carry out market research. Of these jobs, telephone marketing was the most impressive and instructive.

Telephone marketing was a test of one’s patience, passion, and communicative skills. You need to be patient when customers are impatient and even hang up the phone; you need to be passionate so your customers can be influenced and feel your sincerity all the time; and you need to be good at communication to clearly convey the information and persuade the customers. Telephone marketing was a comprehensive test, both physically and mentally, because you need to sit all day and deal with different awkward customers by gauging their thoughts.

At first, I felt upset when someone said “I don’t need it” and hung up, but later, I remembered one sentence said by my manager: “Sometimes hard sales doesn’t work. You need to listen to your customers’ needs.” Therefore, the next time I called I added one question: “Could you please tell me your reasons for not learning English?” It turned out that the added question gave me an opportunity to have a further conversation with customers. They would be more likely to share their problems with me and I could realize their needs. Customers won’t buy your products until they know the products. The added question allowed me to introduce the products and solve ambiguity, which could help improve the success rate. What I’ve learned from telephone marketing is that if you don’t dare to be active, your competitors will do and poach the potential customers.

Skills are applied knowledge through practice and experience. As a student majoring in Business English, I realize that I can take full advantage of my holidays to do something interesting and instructive. The summer internship taught me how to react when facing different business situations and how to be positive when confronting tricky problems, which would also influence my way of thinking to some degree in the future. It was a summer of happiness and fulfilment, and I will always value the memories.