So we’re now live. All Portal Forums will be closed tomorrow. All hail the Community Site.

From a customer perspective, we hope that everyone will enjoy engaging with our Community as a whole, be they MetroNet, PlusNet, Force9 or Free-Online customers. There will also be polls, blogs (like this one) and various other activities to engage our Community.

From my and the rest of the Comms Teams perspective, it can’t come soon enough! At times, we would have upto and over 15 open tabs in our browsers, looking at several different aspects of our Portal forums. Now we can see them all at once! with the handy “Show unread posts since last visit” button, I can now just go through on a single page and see everything that has been posted since I last looked.

From our perspective, this saves a considerable period of time, especially first thing in the morning when setting everything up! This means that we will be able to spend more time engaging with our customers and helping out wherever possible.

It is the dawn of a new era.

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A few more interesting additions to the fully launched Community Site over the last few days!

- Dave Tomlinson, our traffic management guru has been testing out the BBC iPlayer and is pleased to confirm that it works a treat on the PlusNet broadband network.

- Bob Pullen has some good news for customers running their own mailservers. A much-requested feature to stop email being delivered to our secondary mailservers has now been rolled out. At (mx.)last.

- I have just posted about improvements BT Wholesale are making to their line management systems to improve the experience for customers who suffer from a blip in sync-speed.

- Read about changes we’ve made to our Failed Billing processes to improve the customer experience for people who’s payments are unsuccessful. Believe it or not, the cause of around 25% of issues is customers’ credit or debit cards expiring!

- Melise Jones, Head of Network Operations, provides her account of how PlusNetters pulled through during the Sheffield Floods in June 2007.

Enjoy. As ever, do comment on the articles if you have anything to add…!

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Ever had a random sync-speed drop that resulted in slow throughput for days?

The necessary evil of MaxDSL (otherwise known as the IP Profile) is the throughput cap that BT assign to customers’ lines. It’s designed to stop packet loss within BT Wholesale’s ADSL network and, working alongside our own Maximum Rate for your connection helps to improve end user performance by ensuring the traffic is intelligently managed from end-to-end.

The IP Profile and bRAS profile for customer lines react to fluctuations in sync-speed (the speed at which you connect with the telephone exchange). That means that if your connection speed drops – then the IP Profile limit swiftly follows suit. In turn, we then receive an update from BT which updates our own limit for customers’ throughput. The net result is a better performing line at lower sync-speeds and therefore better performance in some fault cases.

Fluctuations in sync-speed can be caused by a variety of things. Storms, for example, can result in a reduction in sync-speed and you can also affect it by plugging telephone equipment into the line without a microfilter. A line fault could also result in increased noise on the line and therefore a lower sync-speed.

The inconvenience occurs, however, when everything returns to normal. That is, everything except your IP Profile. As explained above, it doesn’t take much to trigger a decrease of your IP Profile – that all happens smoothly! But currently it can take 3-4 days of a stable sync for it to go back up and that is what BT are now changing the logic of.

From 7th August, BT Wholesale are introducing what they call “Adaptive Rate Logic”. Essentially, this means more granular management of the sync-speed to IP Profile relationship. Under “Adaptive Rate Logic”, raising the IP Profile after a sync blip will be based on the percentage increase monitored. Lines which quickly come back up to normal sync-speed will see the IP Profile lifted within just a few hours in most cases, whilst lines with a sync-speed that increases more slowly will result in a longer wait and thus proven stability of the line before the IP profile follows.

BT’s briefing to ISPs stated :-
“The current Max logic rules mean higher sync rates are required to be sustained for 3 days to invoke an upwards BRAS profile move, irrespective of the degree of line rate change.

This way any lines that have dropped to an artificially low line rate for any reason ( e.g..
thunderstorm) and revert to a higher line rate soon after may only need to wait a short time for the higher BRAS profile to be invoked.”

If you wish to find out what your IP Profile is then try a BT Performance Test at http://www.speedtester.bt.com

If you think you might be suffering a speed fault, have a read of James’s excellent blog post here : http://users.plus.net/QL:8831BC49

Liam Martin
PlusNet Comms Team

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I found this website whilst “stumbling” across the Internet over the weekend. I wish I had had this type of application whilst doing my A levels All I had was lined paper and a casio calculator that drew pretty graphs (now I am showing my age!).

Hopefully there will be more of these types of websites over the next 7-10 years as my daughters grow up and ask me to help with their homework.

regards

Dean

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I’m writing with absolute conviction when I say that this is one deliverable I’m sure a lot of customers with hosted domains will be very happy about! Particularly those managing their own DNS records or those running their own mail servers.

Today we will be looking to provide functionality on the portal that will allow customers to remove the mx.last secondary mail record from domains they have hosted on their account.

This is something that we often receive requests for, especially from business users. It’s also the 5th most voted for network feature over on the Usergroup Issue tracker.

Removing the mx.last MX record from a domain allows customers with the necessary technical expertise to manage their own email in it’s entirety without being forced to use our back-up mail servers.

More…

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Some of you will have questions about the new Community Site. We have tried to anticipate and address as many of these as possible below. We will update this page as we receive new questions, so if you have need to know anything else please ask in a comment below.

- Why are we doing this?

The new community site has been talked about for many years, and is intended to bring all of our different communities together (Force9, Free-Online, Metronet, PlusNet etc) in a single, faster and more functional community environment. The new site not only contains forums but has staff blogs and a newsfeed. The community site has a roadmap which will bring more functionality in the months following the launch. This will be published in the next few weeks.

The community site means that the knowledge of our community can be shared more easily, and staff will be able to contribute to the discussions more often and without the repetition that currently occurs across 5 different forums.

Another big advantage of the new community is that contributors identities are not tied to their account username: The username you sign up with on the community site does not need to match your vISP username. This is something which was frequently requested by users of the old forums.

We’ve chosen SMF for the new forum software because it offers more forum features then the previous version of phpBB we are using.

- What is happening to the existing Portal Discussion Forums?

For the next week the old forums will continue as they are. However, on the 1st August we plan to be make the old forums read only, which will mean no new posts will be accepted and people wishing to post will be directed to the community site.

- What is happening to existing posts and post counts?

We won’t be deleting anything! For the time being all existing posts will be left where they can be referenced. We are planning to transfer all of the old posts over to the community site, but this presents some interesting technical challenges. There is currently no estimated time for this to be completed, but we hope it will be done by the end of August. Some people have large post counts, and we understand they will wish to keep these, along with their associateforum ranks. We intend to address this in due course, but if you are concerned about losing your post count please contact a member of the Comms team.

How do I register for the community site? To register for the community site, you must first visit the appropriate portal registration page. This allows us to authenticate that you are a customer before creating your new community site account.

http://community.plus.net/registration

Here, you must enter your chosen username and password for the community site. These details will be displayed publically when you post or make a comment. Once logged into the Community Site you will be able to change your Nickname should you wish to. Once you have registered you do not need to return to this page.

If you had already registered on the commuity site, don’t worry, yourusername is safe and you won’t need to change it. We will be in touch soon to tell you how we intend to make sure your accounts have been setup in exactly the same way as those who registered via the portal.

It will no longer be possible to register directly on the community site once it is live.

- Does the community site store my personal details?

Registrations on the community site are stored separately from your PlusNet account details and we don’t store anything that would allow someone with access to information on the community site any access to your account. This is a deliberate security measure, although we have no reason to believe the community site will be insecure.

Your real username and other personal information is never used by or stored on the Community Site servers. However, when you register your current contact email address will be used by the community site for your new account. This address is used for notifications, and can be changed once you have logged into the community site for the first time.

- Where can I change the details, such as email address, that the community site stores for me?

Once logged in, here.

- What happens if I cancel my account?

When you cancel your account with PlusNet, your details will be removed from the community site and your posting rights will be removed as a result. Only customers with an active account can contribute to the community site currently, although there may be occasional exceptions made in certain circumstances.

- What is the Moderation Policy on the community site?

Our existing moderators have kindly agreed to continue moderating the forums, using the same policies as applied on the Portal Forums. You can find these rules posted in the forums. The moderation policies may change over time, but as with any decisions like this it will be left to the moderators to decide how the forums are moderated. PlusNet goes to great pains not to interfere with the day to day of the forums and it’s important to us that the community site is run by the community even though it is provided by PlusNet.

- Are the same forums going to exist?

The only difference in available forums that users should notice is that some of the forum names may be slightly different. Other than that the same forums will exist but with the added functionality of the SMF software.

- Am I going to be able to change the look of the forum?

At the moment we do not have any separate themes. We are however planning to add these at a later date.

- Will I know which ISP another user is from?

We will not be showing this information initially, but if there is demand we could add this as a future roadmap item. We expect most of the posts on the community site to posted generally applies to other visps.

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Saw this neat site back in March whilst at SXSW (South by SouthWest) in Austin, Texas. They have dramtically improved the user experience since then and I thought it time to let you guys see it.

http://www.vimeo.com/

The concept is similar to many video sites where you upload your video and tag it and people can view them. What makes vimeo special is its ability to set permissions on a per video basis so you can only allow your friends or colleagues see a video etc.. whilst making others public. Would recommend you take a look at this site if your into video sharing or want to try it out for the first time.

Then, today, I came across this site which has been built by some of the guys at Flickr! A great viral website which is making the rounds on the Net and driving up awareness for Flickr! in the process. This is the type of advertising which is going to hit the spot with the techno-savvy users of tomorrow. If your running a business you seriously need to think about this type of marketing activity as it provides great bang for the buck if you hit a chord with the audience.

regards

Dean

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Missed a payment this month? Forgot to update your new Card details? Or simply oblivious to the fact that the bank has messed up again? We’ve all been there! Here at PlusNet we have implemented a new scheme whereby any missed payments on your account can be resolved quickly and easily in one simple phone call. Our new approach is more friendly, reliable and personable, providing a greater level of communication between ourselves and our customers.

The day following a failed payment our team are striving to contact the customer to establish the problem and offer a suitable solution, thereby preventing any unnecessary disruptions to your service.

One of the most prominent issues to emerge from our new process is that around 25% of missed payments are due to expired Credit Card payment details. An easy way around this is to create a Direct Debit, a more convenient method of payment, thus negating the need to update.

Establishing communication with the customer within such a short space of time has allowed us to meet the needs of the customer more effectively through discussion of new product packages on offer, rectifying any faults and providing solutions to any grievances.

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I thought I’d write a quick post about the number of broadband providers offering some rather large incentives to attract new customers. When I first saw the adverts for the new Orange offer I was impressed but it instantly got me thinking – How is this possible, why are they doing it and what do they want in return?

More…

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The top issues affecting the Customer Support Centre this week have been :-

Hardware Setup Queries
We’re seeing an increase in new customers receiving their hardware for the first time who wish to be talked through the setup rather than following the step-by-step process of the instruction guides. We’ve also seen customers who have not entered the realm at the end of their ADSL connection username, and existing customers who have changed their passwords on the Portal, but not in their connection equipment, are calling up for assistance.

We’re currently working on a Welcome Guide insert that will be sent out with new hardware welcoming customers to PlusNet and providing a whole host of useful information and setup advice. We can use this feedback from customers to ensure that the information we send out is as useful and clear to understand as possible. The guide will be customised to the hardware ordered so that the information is relevant to the customer.

Email Configuration
New accounts and mailboxes. There is a wealth of information on the website and in the new Welcome Email, but many customers prefer to be talked through it. The majority of queries come from new customers who wish to enquire about email in general and then require assistance setting up their mail client. Queries were generally from Outlook Express or Windows Mail users, but also a few Thunderbird users cropping up who require help too.

We’ve also seen existing customers get in touch who have bought new PCs and as a result require advice on setting up the mail profile from scratch.

The Welcome Guide, mentioned above, that we’re currently developing will include instructions on how to setup email for new customers and how to configure all the common mail clients including Windows Mail / Outlook Express and Thunderbird.

Fault Updates
Unfortunately, due to the “MBORC” (Matter beyond our reasonable control) that BT have declared, we’re seeing an increase in reported faults and an increase in lead-time at BT Wholesale’s end when responding to fault reports.

This has resulted in an increase in calls to our Support Centre from customers requesting fault updates. We are investigating faults within 24-48 hours of them being raised. We aim to have all faults investigated within 24 hours.

The extreme weather has mainly resulted in no-sync or intermittent connection faults. We have been advising customers to wait until BT have completed any necessary maintenance work and the weather has subsided before raising faults through to BT Wholesale for investigation.

We have provided updates to customers by SMS where possible.

We thank customers for their extra patience during this busy period.

Provisioning Updates
Failed or delayed orders. Customers calling to chase orders or to provide required information to push orders through. We were affected by a Priority 1 Problem this week with regards to inbound migrations getting ’stuck’ with no order being placed and no rejection being flagged to us. This resulted in more calls than normal prior to the problem being resolved. This has now been fixed.

We’ve had some calls from customers who we’ve not been able to get in touch with about their delayed or rejected order. When this happens we place a ticket on their account and send them an email – though they may not see this if they’re without internet access.

SPAM
Not as many queries as last week – but of those we have had they are the same types of query as before. Customers receiving unwanted e-mails and asking about our Spam Protection. Concerned parents asking for advice on filtering spam from their children. In general, customers calling do understand that we are working hard to reduce spam on our network. We’ve had some good feedback on Blog updates regarding Spam and what we’re doing to help combat it.

You can find our Spam Protection guide on the Portal here.

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Please Note: This weekly post represents the significant topics our customers have raised with our support team over the course of this week. The information is provided in the spirit of openness for which PlusNet strives. Each day we review pertinent items and this drives internal discussion around what we can do to improve the experience for customers.

Customer feedback or suggestions on any of these items (especially if it helps us improve the experience for other customers) is most welcome via the comments section below.

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