Welcome to another fabulous edition of the PlusNet end of day post, EOD for short. Well let’s get straight into the action with the days activities..

—First up today we have Kelly from the CSC

Today in the CSC we have been having a blitz on our cancellations and provisioning ticket pools, and beginning to discuss fancy dress options for Halloween!!

Top reasons for contacting the CSC today:

1. New faults checks – diagnosis and raising of new faults – 25%

2. Fault Updates – customers calling for updates on previously raised faults – 20%

3. Router Setups – mainly new customers forgetting the realm – 15%

4. Email Configuration – mainly Outlook Express and Windows mail – 10%

5. Billing issues – mainly issues with expired debit/credit cards – 10%

Other Miscellaneous issues – 20%

—Followed hot on the heels by Paul Mitchell from Development

Last time I posted, I was in the thick of some very interesting optimisation work to one of our internal systems. That development work is done and so my next step is to begin the process of quality assurance by securing a peer review of the code from one of my senior colleagues.

Here at PlusNet, a peer review involves checking that the code as written complies with our internal standards and is fit for the intended purpose. As well as improving the quality of our code, the review process is also an invaluable training tool for new developers. It provides an opportunity for more seasoned developers to share their experience by passing on best practices and cultivating good coding habits.

As a relative newcomer to PlusNet (I joined in June) I have yet to qualify as a code reviewer. Over the coming months I intend to learn how to provide this valuable service, share my experience of writing good code with my colleagues and, ultimately, be better able to help enhance the experience our customers have when dealing with our unique computer systems.

—Next up is Darren from Products

So it’s Thursday and that can only mean one thing! Yes that’s right, Its Max upgrading day for me. Besides upgrading customers to the joys of max speeds, I have been continuing with my current project of upgrading dial-up customers to broadband.

Ian is back today (even though I am quite scared the team is going to fall plague to the dreaded flu, sorry Maria but I might not be in next week *cough*) and today he’s been as busy as ever giving his presentation of ‘The Community Site’ to finance. There has also been some heavy debates about our future strategy plan and don’t worry, we intend to have you fully involved in this discussion.

Shaun’s been investigating correlation between ADSL and Homephone signups, continuing his work on our internal dashboard and doing what looks like some very fun SQL queries.

Rich has continued work on our VoIP platform and has written a draft for our comms team on its future development.

— Colin brings us todays news from the Web Team

It’s been business as usual in the Web Team today… we’re still a man down, with Jonny away at the Future of Web Apps Conference (Rupert’s back with us today – now it’s the turn of the rest of us to feel horrible! )

We’ve been carrying on with the usual round of problem fixes and development on new projects within the teams.

— Marketing have passed the baton to Martyn today

Hello from Marketing. We’ve been working hard on prototypes for upcoming product improvements (again), I think they’re looking good! The email we mentioned yesterday (promoting the new My Referrals offer) has also finished sending now, so hopefully we’ll see some positive results as you lot go and tell your friends and family about us
We’ve also been preparing another promotional email and we’ve updated the Community Site poll – go and cast your vote now if you haven’t already.
More from us tomorrow, this is marketing signing off.

— James reports from Finance

With the month end completed for …. well another month, today has been less hectic for some but we have still had plenty of issues to attend to.

We have seen a fantastic effort on ticket closures, with Kate closing 138 and Jen closing 158, which is an excellent effort. The rest of the team have been attending our quarterly finance meeting, were we have been discussing the progress of the department over the period and the goals for the future.

And Finally ….. we are going out after the team meeting so I’m off!!

—Whats that coming over the hill, is it a monster? No, it’s just Bob with today’s Comms update

Errr, thanks Chris (I think!).

Been pretty busy as usual in the Comms team today – No industrial action here, oh no siree! Not that all our hard work will get customers’ hardware to them any quicker

I’ve been doing some VoIP testing following this morning’s maintenance and reading up on our up and coming plans for the platform (more on this soon!). Have also been casting an eye over the days Network change controls to make sure they’re all good from a Comms and customer viewpoint. The email changes we made this morning to fix a few outstanding spam and virus problems seem to have gone without hitch as well and I’ve been popping into the forums and newsgroups where I’ve had the chance.

It’s worth mentioning that we’ve just rolled out some emergency configuration changes to the mail platform which we’ll all be keeping a close eye on. This should help reduce the levels of spam we process and should hopefully reduce the stress this is putting on our mail platform. I’ve started a forum thread over on the Community Site to discuss these changes here.

Wondering where James has been? Well he’s been on leave no doubt enjoying a stress-free day out of the office. Having said that I hear a rumour he’s spent over £400 shopping! (They’re paying you too much! – Ed)

Chris has been continuing work on the new email induction training for the n00bs, covering the forums and finalising some of the comms stuff for the up and coming LAN party on the 20th October – Watch out Chris i’ve been taking some lessons from the pros!

Mand has been continuing to ensure everyone’s kept in the loop since we moved to a new payment services supplier. She’s also been covering the problem processes for the support centre and doing the Comms review thang for all the development change controls.

Matt’s been working on an email send to customers, been in and out of the forums and seems to becoming ever familiar with the process of priority problem raising (w00t! less work for the rest of us!) .

That’s all from me, thanks for reading.

Chris

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This entry was posted by Chris Parr on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 4:25 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD, Tech News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a reply below. Pinging is currently not allowed.