It’s Wednesday!  Have you bought your beloved some flowers?  A card? You’d better get a shift on if you’ve forgotten.  Love is in the air in the CSC it seems - they at least seem to be preparing for some Valentine’s fun and games. It might be worth taking a look at the webcams tomorrow who knows?

Here we go then with your daily updates..

From Ian in the beating heart of the business, the CSC:

Today has been a steady day, no peaks or massive call queues; which is always good.  Or maybe we were all so busy we missed them!

The main issues keeping us busy have been:

1. Router Setup - Both new customers and old. Many of the new customers require talking through setting up their devices, other customers tend to be calling for specific settings or for clarification of the ‘realm’ required for their connection.
2. Email Setup - This seems to be mainly new customers.  A lot of people make minor mistakes with their client setup and call in to confirm settings. There are also a lot of problems relating to antivirus and firewall setups. The setup guides on the portal are good, but a lot of users don’t seem to be aware of all the self-support material that is available, maybe something we need to push more.
3. Existing Faults - No particular patterns to these calls. Due to the high number of faults at this time of year there are a higher than normal number of customers calling in for updates to existing logged faults.
4. Billing / Usage Enquiries - Customers calling in with respect to account billing and usage. Many new customers find they use the Internet more than they anticipate and wish to upgrade to a more suitable account.
5. Sales Enquiries - There always seems to be a steady influx of potential customers looking for information on our broadband and home phone packages.

Mark H, reports business as usual in the networks department:

Al continues to redefine the boundaries of database monitoring, and everyone else has been beavering away too.

 Ben: Customer DBs
 Dunc: Monitoring and housekeeping
 Dan: Abuse work and tickets.
 Matt: Tickets
 Mark: Webmail/FP move, upgrade of VPN.
 Carl: New Peering Links, Documentation, New Colocation Meeting
 Josh: Brightview handover docs
 Michael and Sarah: Problem investigation
 Mike G and Simon: Brightview mail, backup platform
 Russ: Improving monitoring resiliency
 Rizwan: Working on security scripts to audit systems and packages

New girl Melanie from Development introduces herself:

After just over a week at PlusNet I am starting to understand what is required of a Development Team Manager, and it looks like its going to be ‘fun’. I’m still very much in the realms of getting to know my way around the job and department, but what I’ve seen so far looks good.

Much of my time this week has been spent sitting in on various meetings absorbing information, learning by osmosis and meeting far more people than names I can remember.

Today I’ve been getting to grips with the work that my team of 6 (talented) developers is currently working on. Two of my team are working on Madasafish, whilst the rest are ramping up work on the BV Phase 2 project.

Much of the department will be working ‘eyeballs out’ on this project over the coming weeks, and I’m looking forward to being part of the action.

Relatively-new boy Tim in Marketing says:
Wow, I have made it to a month at PlusNet (you don’t have to sound so surprised Tim - Ed) and as a reward I get to do the End of Day. It really has gone surprisingly fast and with all that is going on has proved very, very busy, which certainly keeps you on your toes.

Today has seen a fair bit of press, in particular a great result from Epitiro where their latest broadband statistics show PlusNet climbing to 2nd place.

Broadband ISPs’ services ranked (WebUser)

Community Site Blog

As a team, a variety of task have been taking place, from site performance reviews and marketing meetings to upcoming email campaigns and the design of new landing pages.

Mand in Comms:

It’s been pretty quiet in Comms today, with team members infiltrating other departments.

Chris has been manning the forums, sending an email about delayed hardware, clearing down some tickets, and tidying up his task list.

Bob gave me a bullet point EOD, trying to emphasise that he’s too busy to write in proper sentences. Or something.. Anyway here it is:

• Clearing Postini Addition Pool
• Completed Fring blog (yet to be published)
• Completed Gradwell diagnostics KB article and esc process
• Dealt with a few problems
• Managed networks CCs
• Odd bit of forum posting

James has continued work on our plans for the year, account management, dealing with a couple of complaints, and posting in the forums.

Matt has been working on our upcoming Enhanced Care project, along with bobbing in and out of the forums and calling a couple of users with very high usage.

I have been working on some reporting issues; dealing with problems raised internally, writing a blog about business products, and achieving the ultimate goal of no outstanding personal tickets!

We’re also rebelling against Carol’s missive to make us wear red tomorrow, but I’d recommend you take a look at the webcams to laugh at us all as no doubt some of my colleagues will be dressed up in some way.

Lastly, Sean Shaun from Products, who is in his very last week with us:

Darren and Ian are away today, apparently meeting suppliers in London, but we’re convinced they’ve just gone for a jolly. (No doubt there will be some witty retort in tomorrow’s EOD from Darren.)

So, it’s down to me. It’s my final week at PlusNet, as I’m leaving for pastures new (driving for 3 hours a day is taking its toll!), so I’ve been busy writing handover documentation so all my tasks and knowledge are shared between the rest of my team after my departure. I’ve also been looking at usage and churn.

Dave has been doing some further usage analysis (separately to mine - maybe we should have discussed this earlier!), as well as updating the documents on how we design our broadband products (and no, it’s not a wet finger in the air as the cynical of you out there might suggest, it’s much more scientific than that - there’s at least 3 wet fingers held at different points around the building). He’s also been looking into what his next blog might be about. If you haven’t read any of Dave’s mighty blogs, check ‘em out - they’re awesome!

Rich has been working on some strategy documentation, including the process behind the prioritisation of projects. He’s also been working on getting 03 numbers included in Talk allowance packages (i.e. calls to 03 numbers to be included as part of the inclusive call allowance). He’s also been looking after the VoIP trial by checking support tickets and being ‘involved’ in the forums.

So, that’s it from us. Tune in, same time tomorrow, for some more fascinating insights into how we keep our customers happy and satisfied.
 

Until tomorrow then.. As they say in Hill St Blues, let’s be careful out there..

PJ

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This entry was posted by Peter Jackson on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 7:24 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category EOD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.