As someone who’s completely blind, I was quite nervous attending the Customer Service work experience at Sky. When you have a disability like blindness, it’s always interesting how people react. When I tell them I’m studying software development and programming, a lot of people are shocked that I can use a computer, let alone create a program for one. Thankfully though, this was not the case at Sky. I arrived on the Monday morning and was immediately made to feel extremely welcome, and they never once saw my blindness as an issue. In fact, most people saw it as a positive as I had my guide dog, Iggy, with me – who would complain about having a cute little dog in their workplace for a week?

The work experience started with the induction, learning about Sky as a company and meeting some of the people we’ll be working with. We met Sky Retail managers and also spent time in the Save department, which were more difficult jobs than I expected. The advisors have to make sure they work out customer’s exact interests and manage to sell them Sky, or in terms of the Save department, try and find them better bundles and deals to prevent them from leaving.

Another interesting exercise was spending time with the Sky Engineers, who talked us through what they have to do on a day-to-day basis when installing Sky in customer’s properties, and how certain issues, such as the Sky TV not receiving signal, are repaired. We even got to build satellite dishes, which was great!

The place that interested me the most was on the final day of the work experience, when we visited the Leeds Dock site, where all the technical things such as apps and websites are developed and maintained. It was amazing to see so many talented Designers, Programmers, Developers and Testers working in the same place, and all with the same enthusiasm for their jobs.

Overall, I would say this work experience has been one of the most enjoyable weeks I’ve had. What stood out for me is that everyone enjoys coming into work and enjoys what they do, and always wanting to help people. It’s made me realise that working somewhere like Sky would be great for me.

I’ve also been contacted by Leeds dock to see if I’d be interested in doing some more work experience exclusively with them as an app tester. So watch this space!