Tuesday already – the week is flying by.  Check the post below about the Postini anti-spam partnership if you’ve not yet read done so.. it’s positive news for all of our spam-battered Inboxes.

Another extremely busy day for the CSC (and all of us really here).  For those not directly involved in customer support there is still so much preparation and planning for the Quarter to be done; and for those like me (who support our customers through the online help and support tools we provide) it’s a double-dose of Busy as problems are raised and fixed in quick succession.

On to today’s quick trot around the block.. Ultra-busy in the CSC again today.. your patience if trying to call at busy periods is very much appreciated.

Here’s Steve with the Top 5 call types:

1. Sales – Our top call type today. Customers asking us varied questions about our products.
2. Spam issues – We’re seeing a number of people calling in regarding the seasonal increase in spam.
3. Router config – A number of our customers like to be able to be talked through setting up their routers on their new PlusNet connection.
4. E-mail config/mailboxes – We’re seeing a number of customers having a play with our Manage My Mail tool and asking some questions about how to do things like add more mailboxes.
5. Fault updates – Plenty of our customers have been calling up for fault updates.

Good luck to Team B tonight!
 

Tell us James, what’s it been like today in Business Support?

A brief update today. Adam has been busy investigating a P1 on hardware which you can view more details of on the Priority on the Portal problem page more details can be seen on the link below. So he has been calling some affected customers to keep them informed of the situation.

On behalf of the whole team we would like to thank Ian G for turning off the beeping coming from the Networks secure area. It was a small beep but it was driving us all crazy over the past couple of days. Get that man a cuppa! (see Comms for the tea as they seem to be the experts on that)

The rest of us have just been doing a whole variety of support requests. So to finish our top 3 issues today from the business team would read as:

1. Spam – offering business customers further advice on spam and activating filtering as required
2. Mailboxes – helping business customers setup new mailboxes, aliases, redirects etc both from the portal as well as how to collect those from their mail clients
3. Faults – customers checking on fault updates and arranging further required work where applicable

Some big news coming from Aaron and Kevin in our domain team they have launched a new billing system today for Pay As You Host along with a product/package refresh happening tonight so I would urge you all to check it out tomorrow. Aaron has assured me its free to register an account with no obligation – so give them a try.

Our man in Marketing, Martyn.. tell us the scores on the doors:

We’re a man down today due to illness but the rest of us have been busy as ever. We’ve been preparing an email about what we’re doing to combat spam, so keep an eye on your Inbox as it’ll soon be on its way.

PlusNet doesn’t do a lot of print advertising but we have got a couple of items coming up, so we’ve been drafting the copy for these today. We’ve also had our fair share of meetings today, with everyone in the team attending at least one.

In Networks, our update comes today from NetOps:

Hullo, Michael here from the NetOps team. Today I have been mostly sticking labels to cables and updating the documentation for our test platform. Denis has returned from his holiday and has been working on adding resiliency to our IWF system. Mark has been performing maintenance on the backup path of one of our 622 pipes as well as investigating a new monitoring platform. Simon has been planning ahead for the coming quarter and working with SUN on a support case. Richard has been working on customer questions, and Ian has been working on internal problems.

Darren brings us his usual insight into the ways of Product:

Very active day in Products, haven’t really seen Maria and Ian, they have been in and out of meetings about future development all day. Dave’s been working on tickets and port requests; he’s also been looking into speed profiles. Shaun’s been working on database testing. Today has been one of Rich’s most productive days for at least a couple of months! Maybe there’s something in the olives we’ve been eating. Rich has been working on the VoIP platform, including cosmetic changes and 0845 number work. I’ve been working on reports for Marketing affiliates, managing trial accounts and working on a hardware P1 which should be resolved in the morning once new stock arrives.

Catherine, I’ve been pestering QA today I know.. tell us what your day’s been like:

We were a little down in strength today, as I’m back, but unfortunately Matt is ill so we’re still down one quality assurer. Fear not, though, we’re still working as hard as we can on various things.

So.. Gavin was actually about to keep his QA New Year’s resolution (and you thought I’d just made them up!) by teaching Gary about QA Wizard but sadly there’s just been too much work to spare two team members. As a result, both the G-men have been working on problems, either ‘proper hammering some bugs’ (Gary) or working with our chums in Networks to sort out gremlins in our testing platform (Gavin).

Nigel and I have had an interesting day looking at how our colleagues at Madasafish  do things. Getting used to a new system is always fun.. and occasionally a little confusing.

Paul had been trying to avoid problem testing after his mammoth stint at the end of last year, but, sadly, has been unable to go completely cold turkey and has had to pick a few up after the official problem tester (ie, me) was reassigned to other things.

And, phew! The pod people have clearly relinquished their hold on everyone’s favourite database h4×0r, as Gary’s just gone off to get some rib ‘n’ saucy Nik Naks. (Your guess is as good as mine dear reader – Ed)

James, tell us about Comms today:

We move into Day 2 without Chris and as expected, we’ve all been very busy. Today I’ve been dealing with some personal tickets, doing my normal forum work, account management, writing a blog post about spam  and looking at a couple of problems. I’ve also been doing a spot of project work.

There’s also been some discussion about what I should change my name to, after I foolishly said that I was considering doing so! Why not add your own thoughts in this thread and we’ll have a poll tomorrow, after which I’ll change my display name on this site for a day or so

Bob’s been run off his feet handling network change controls, dealing with spam queries and trying to get his Postini update blog written. He’s also been dealing with a number of problems that have been raised internally and writing some service status updates.

Mand has been handling development change controls, problem management and handling some other internal queries. Matt has been spending most of his time looking at our forums and handling some referral related queries.

We’ll be back tomorrow to find out what the likely options of my new name will be…

Thanks then Gloria.  That’s all for tonight then..  And I am absolutely not going to spend another late night reading blogs from CES.. absolutely not.

P-j

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