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Customers connected to nearly 50% of BT exchanges in the country could be suffering very poor speeds due to capacity on the exchange network being at an all time low.

The Customer Support Centre have been noticing an unusual number of faults being returned as rejected from BT over the last few weeks, so we did some digging! BT will reject a fault if it’s a speed fault and the customer is on a congested exchange.

Exchange status information is publicly accessible and can be searched on various websites including our own Usertools site (http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges). The database feeding Usertools was updated last week, and it was noted that nearly 50% of exchanges are RED for capacity. This can result in poor speeds at off-peak time, and even more so at peak times, and means that the BT exchange is under-capacity. This is something that could affect all customers on the exchange, regardless of who their ISP is.

My own exchange in Sheffield is currently on Red status, and has been for some time. BT keep pushing back the date to upgrade capacity - but I do hope they do it sometime soon! It can result in peak-time performance for an 8Mb connection being around 400kbps for me, and there’s nothing I, nor my ISP (us), can do about it.

This graph shows the impact of the issues over the last few weeks :

So, next time you’re getting slow speeds at random or peak times - do check your exchange status at http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges before raising a fault to us!

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Busiest Ticket Pools at 9am, Wednesday October 25th :

CSC - Account Change 6
CSC - DSL Faults Total 79
CSC - TC Faults Total 6
CSC - Team Leader 14
Customer Support Centre 859

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Today, the TSM’s and Gareth Preece have been busy running a recruitment assessment centre. There have been some interesting candidates and hopefully we will see some new faces in the CSC in the near future.

Good luck to the candidates, with my assessment being so fresh in my mind, I can certainly feel for them.

CSC signs

At last we have now had our signs erected above the pods. Each area is clearly identified by workflow. No more scrambling around for me, wondering who is what lol.

Strike Back

As reported on Tuesday, Team B made a sterling effort in the fight against the dark side. By working outside of hours they have completed 288 issues. This has been a fantastic effort from all involved. Well done guys. Are any of the other teams prepared to take up the challenge? Bring it on.

Today’s Wow winners were:- Carl Baker and Andy Bunker. A bottle of vino went to each. Don’t drink it all at once guys

What is WOW? That’s a question I asked on day one and for those of you who don’t yet know I’ll try and explain. WOW has been something of a mystery since the concept was formed in mid September and there has been much speculation as to what it stands for.
It is simply War on Work and has played an integral role in driving the push to clear the recent back log.

Each day, the top performers are WOW’d, openly praised and rewarded for their efforts. The prizes are on view on the table in the CSC and they are plentiful and well cool. WOW has helped bring the fun back into the CSC and together with the Star Wars theme is proving to be a success.

Tiscali

As we continue the fight back, the news regarding the current state of play with Tiscali faults is superb. Following some fantastic work and dedication, faults are now 3.5 times less than they were last month. Of the 146 faults now open, 75% are with us or the customer awaiting further action.

New Blogger

Gareth Preece will be joining the Blog Team next week so look out for his maiden blog. It promises to be worth waiting for.

Feel the Force!

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CSC - Account Change 2
CSC - DSL Faults Total 57
CSC - TC Faults Total 2
CSC - Team Leader 2
Customer Support Centre 824

Total Tickets     934

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Historically, Monday’s and Tuesday’s are our busiest days, so we’d always expect things to pick up a bit here.

CSC - DSL Faults Total 116
CSC - TC Faults Total 9
CSC - Team Leader 7
CSC Agent 80
Customer Support Centre 784

Total Tickets 1060

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The IVR was opened up today to allow the remaining Broadband Faults through to the CSC. We have seen a slight upturn in calls but this has had no negative effect.

As we move forwards in the fight against the dark side, the strike back continues.

Team B have pledged to commit 4 hours each, out of work time tomorrow, (Wed) to further reduce the current number of tickets. Is any one else prepared to beat this one???

Luke and I put our window dressing skills to good use yesterday and I reckon the prize table in the CSC is looking pretty good indeed. “Suit you Sir”

So whether its beer, wine or chocolate, the table is full and and its yours for the taking

Simon Leary is currently helping out the TSM’s whilst I get up to speed. Another shoulder for me to lean on. Nice one Simon.

Many congratulations are due to the PlusNet football team who recently were Division 1 winners in the Soccerscene Summer 2006 league and runners up in the Cup. Special CSC pats on the back to Nick Dodds, Simon Leary and James Kirkham. Well done all.

We’ll be back tomorrow with more news. Meantime, may the force be with you.

Mark

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The BBC are reporting major issues affecting users of the Orange broadband service, formerly Wanadoo.

The broadband service run by mobile firm Orange is experiencing a “major” national outage.

Several users have complained that they have been unable to use their connection since Monday afternoon.

The company said the fault on the service, formerly known as Wanadoo, was due to a “third party network failure affecting large parts of country”.

Orange said they were working to fix the problem but there is no indication when a normal service will resume.

You can read more here.  Looks like the future is not as bright for Orange users as it could be right now.  Is their unsustainable ‘free’ broadband beginning to crumble?

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So, the start of the CSC Blog begins.

This will be different from the Comms blog as we will focus on the CSC and the analysts (those who take the calls and answer the tickets) rather than the Comms guys who meddle in the forums :p

Today, we are starting to look much healthier in terms of the support backlogs. We are down to about 250 tickets in the CSC pool which is fantastic.

Mark Kelly has been with us a week now and you can already see he has aged a lot with the pressure we put on all our staff

We launched a theme for the next month or two to ensure our staff whilst working hard still retain the fun element of working at PN. Some pics from last week can be seen below.

More tomorrow…….

Luke

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As of 9am

Customer Support Centre : 743
CSC Callback Pool : 33
CSC DSL Faults Total : 161
BOT DSL Logged Faults: 242
BOT Tiscali Faults Total : 115
CSC Agent : 80 (personally assigned)
Total Tickets (CSC) : 1193

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Fondly referred to as Mand’s lecturing tool - we haven’t seen the likes of the legendary GM Maestro (although I personally preferred my GM Canon) since February time, but during the big move, it has been found again!

Watch out ADSLGuide. Mand is armed and dangerous

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