I don’t know whether it’s because it’s Friday, or whether it’s because everyone’s been eating doughnuts (although nobody thought to give me one, the rotten lot), but we’ve had plenty of feedback from around the business for today’s EOD. Not least from Comms and Networks with news about the backup power supply situation at Internet House.  We’ve got TWO updates from development and even got the Finance department joining in!

Customer Support Centre: Annette in the CSC reports today on the top issues reported on the phones as being:

1. Initial setup – new routers, wrong usernames, misunderstanding wiring. Customers not reading setup instructions correctly or not following correct procedures.
2. Authentication faults – Customers experiencing authentication issues this includes some initial setup problems.
3. Email setup – wrong email addresses entered, customers calling requiring assistance with configuring email clients in general.
4. Follow ups on faults – awaiting updates, not been told correct lead time or expectations not met.
5. Sales calls , we have experienced enough of these calls today to place this in as one of the top 5 issues.

Networks: “Hi Plusnet Community! Melise here, Head of Infrastructure Development in Networks. What a week we’ve had! We’ve dealt with the usual operational work of responding to and resolving customer issues through tickets and problems. We’ve also been successful in passing our BT Security Audit. That’s a real positive for us. We’ve done a lot of work this summer on our services and network platform and to have this good result is icing on the cake.

It’s been a rough week in that we’ve had a power problem at one of our two Sheffield Datacentres which has caused us to put loads of senior resource on working with our UPS provider to resolve this afternoon. That work continues so stay tuned to the Service Status Messages our Comms Team are putting out (the issue is now reported as resolved – Ed).

We hope to have everyone back to full strength on Monday so we can get on with our collaborative product work with our Development colleagues. Have a great weekend everyone! MMJ”

Marketing: Mark Kelly is our man in Marketing today, “Gaming.. boy have we got some juicy stuff planned for gaming. ‘Can’t elaborate right now but watch the forums, EOD’s and newsletters   It’s funday Friday and Chris brought in the lovely jammy doughnuts. Yum yum. He needs to watch those calories though (you can talk – Ed). And I’ve been chatting with some of our referrers about their views and experiences of our products and services.

Comms: Chris Parr, “Marketing wasn’t the only department with doughnuts for breakfast, Chris brought Comms some in too! Unfortunately I spent my day up in networks so didn’t actually get to eat many of them.  We’ve been chasing updates on the UPS issue of course.

Bob got his days mixed up and tried to train some of the new starters a few days before they were ready for him! He made up for it by eating all my doughnuts though

Products: Nick says “A good week in Products. Held exploratory meetings with potential VoIP providers as part of our ongoing VoIP review. More to follow over the next couple of weeks. Worked with BT to finalise our response to the OFCOM 999 Emergency Services consultation – highlight of the week!”

Finance: “Well, this is our first attempt so be gentle. It’s been a busy day in Finance with four of the team being away on holiday. We have answered 41 tickets in our ticket pools, leaving NONE for the weekend – no outstanding customer queries left with us! We have filed our VAT return for last month, as well as completing the financial reporting into BT, and presenting the results to managers.”

Development: Owain Lewis reports, “A lot of the functionality that supports our customer base is not directly visible through the portals; we have a host of ‘behind-the-scenes’ back-end systems: one of which is the faults diagnostics and repair platform.  This is a bespoke enterprise application allowing end users to submit fault reports to the supplier.  It maintains the interaction between supplier and customer with a minimum of input from the Customer Support Centre. Today I’ve been mostly working on upgrading the faults platform logic and unit tests. All of the code on the back-end platform has associated unit tests giving us to have a high level of confidence that it’s going to work before going into Quality Assurance”.

Also from Tony, our Project Manager…

“After 20 years in high technology companies, I’ve seen and heard of many projects that have run for months (even years) and still not delivered what the customer wanted. There can be many reasons for this – red-tape, unwieldy process, poor requirements, lack of focus/commitment, etc., but whatever happens elsewhere, I’m pleased to say that this doesn’t happen at PlusNet.

On Wednesday, we started work on one of our latest projects. After a fantastic few days of effort from the team, the scope’s been confirmed, development is progressing well, and our test cycle has already started. We’ll be delivering this project in less time than I’ve known it take other companies to decide what to do. However, be assured that we’re not taking any shortcuts or compromises and we will deliver to the high-quality standards that you expect.

How do we do it? Simply a highly-flexible, enthusiastic, dedicated team that are committed to delivering the best products and services that our customers want. There’s a real buzz around the office (are you sure that this isn’t just the coffee from the canteen? – Ed) and this will build as we get towards roll-out night. There’s still a lot of work to be done and I’m sure there’s some challenges ahead, but I know we’ll do it and I can’t wait to announce the delivery on this site.

Looking round the office, I have to admit I’m probably one of the older members of the team (should that be more mature????). However, it’s such a dynamic and fast-moving environment where everything I do makes a difference, so I certainly don’t feel old. In fact, working at PlusNet keeps me young!!!”

If only I could say the same.. 

Have a great weekend everyone,

Pete Jackson

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