It’s another end of week, this week has flown by, and I’m back to doing Friday’s again. Mind you I have only been in the office for 2 days so that has made time go by faster and today has just flown by catching up and everyone asking the questions they’ve saved up for the last 3 days… oh well, nice to know you’re missed. Sadly my distraction tactics by baking Millionaire’s Shortbread and offering it out to people that wanted me to do work didn’t prevent all of the tasks coming in. Except for a few people Oh well, have to think harder next time.

Anyway, on with the show and we start off today with Jen from HR.

Well, although Gemma and Amanda are both of on hol today, they crammed enough into the previous four to make up for it.

Amongst all our usual HR activities, like preparing for quarterly performance reviews and recruitment we’ve also been covering for Jim and answering facilities queries!

We’ve been reviewing the Employee Opinion Survery Implementation plans from departments and also preparing for the next Plusnet Partnership Group meeting.

Hmmm, what else..oh yes, we’ve been putting together a Company-wide policy on overtime and working on process maps for some of our commonly used procedures.

The next MDLP module is just around the corner, so prep is underway for that and organisation charts have been updated to show all the movers and shakers within the company.

Gem’s in Dublin for a girly weekend to watch Oasis (even though she doesn’t like Oasis) so fingers crossed it won’t bucket it down for her. Ta-ta from me and the rest of the team….

Next is Jake from the Faults team:

Hello.
I’m about two thirds of the way through my secondment on the Faults team, and I’ve had the most challenging day today handling some of the BT escalations, some of the LLU customers’ faults and some of the Home Phone faults we have. I’ve learnt a lot today, and it’s been really good.

Best thing about today ultimately was the Friday Faults Fish & Chips!

My colleagues on Team A have had calls along the lines of:
1) Router config – Mainly new customers getting stuck setting up for the first time, needing a little guidance to set this up

2) Faults (Updates) – Prompted by voice mail or SMS from the faults team or they have been advised of further checks and call back in with extra details to progress the fault.

3) Email – Sending & receiving, usually corrected by giving the customer the correct server settings or just checking the log in details.

4) Provisioning updates – Customer calling in eager to get online, checking their order progress.

5) Billing on the account, there seems to be a lot of people, checking the invoices on the the accounts, often confusion from the Call charges on one bill and base charges on another.

Bye for now.

And last today is Mand from Comms:

Today we did some stuff. Mostly emails, problems, and twitter.

We were mostly rather amused by this.

And it’s Friday. And very nearly beer’o'clock.

And that’s all, time to make like a tree and get out of here. Plenty to do this weekend so have fun everyone and catch you all again next time.

No Comments »

Anyone would think that it was only the CSC that worked here.  Only one submission for the end of day today I’m afraid, which is to be frank, a bit on the poor side.  Not even anything from Comms today.. no silly link or anything. More…

No Comments »

Good Evening! Just the one lonely update from Simon in the CSC today. Enjoy:

Ok, so today has been quite normal, well as normal as Sheffield can be. Nothing major has happened, all though my vision is slightly rose coloured and blurred by the fact that I will be in Turkey this time next week.

So for the top five issues creating calls today we have:

1. Fault Updates – Mainly customers calling about an update that was not possible to send them in a SMS as it was too long.
2. New Faults – People calling in to report faults on their lines.
3. Billing – Nothing out of the ordinary here, mainly expired debit/credit cards that need updating.
4. Router Setups – This does normally hit number one in the list, but seems to be dropping further down every day. Hopefully will be off the list completely when TR69 comes in to play.
5. Email Issues – SPAM! It affects everyone, we know that, it will never stop. However we do have good ways of handling it.

So to summarise, basically an average day, hopefully it will be a reasonably quiet week so I can concentrate on getting everything sorted for my holiday.

Hoşça kalın
(goodbye in Turkish)

Have a nice one!

No Comments »

It’s been pleasant surprise that all the rain (and we had plenty) has now passed us by and it’s actually been a relatively pleasant day in Sheffield today.  Which means I won’t get soaked on the way home tonight, which will be nice!
More…

No Comments »

Good evening readers!

It’s raining, it’s pouring – now the sun is out, now it’s raining

I don’t know how to describe the weather in Sheffield today, I think I’ll go with inconsistent.  I’ve been working from Home today but I imagine that a lot Plusnet staff may have been caught out by the decent start to the day and have received a soaking on the way home due to lack of preparation – no problems here, just shut the window!

Let’s see what Comms have been up to – Mand?

So, Monday, hmm.

CParr is still off festival-ing, and the weather was very very nice the whole time. Jammy so-and-so.

Bob was surprisingly cheerful, and spent the day singing and skipping around the office. In other news he’s working on some email issues and discussing our traffic management process.

James was uncheerful, and wore a coat all day, even when it was really really sunny. In other news he trolled the forums, and picked up a new Marketing project.

Matt was neither cheerful or uncheerful, but did look rather silly wearing shorts and sunglasses when the monsoon-esque rain hit. In other news he was upto TR69 craziness and at one point had his head buried in Powerpoint slides. I didn’t ask why as his hatred of Powerpoint almost rivals my own, and I value my life.

I have been defeating the Mondayness with cheerful music. And copious amounts of Pepsi. In other news I looked at lots of Home Phone accounts, as part of a data reconciliation-type thingy, and discussed some problems with our development team.

That’s enough from us for one day, catch ya later.

What about the Web Team who do we have here?

Tis Mark, from Plusnet’s Web development team, reporting on this historical day. Our Eastern brothers have been ejected from their table, so now we all sit together, on one western table. That is, except for Andy, who’s now sat with Pete up in the call centre. Closer to the action eh Andy? Now when I look to the East, I see our exalted Quality Assurance comrades.

It’s all change down here. Colin has flown to pastures new, although, in truth he probably took the train. Nick’s asked “How the heck do you fill a Colin shaped gap?” With tea and biscuits for starters…

Everyone has been getting on with the usual jobs of fixing things, making new shiny things. An exciting start to the week me things, especially if you like an ocean view.

*Mark looks out to check if the street is flooded yet*

TTFN
Mark

Thank you Mark and Thank YOU for reading – see you soon!

No Comments »

In the next few weeks we will begin a trial of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). The trial is being run by BT Wholesale over their 21CN network and it is our intention to offer it to the customers that can get it.

Initially the trial is being run in two areas – Muswell Hill in London and Whitchurch in Wales. We will be emailing the customers on these exchanges this week to let them know about the trial. More…

18 Comments »

Well, it’s the End of Day for Thursday, June 12th… More…

4 Comments »

The week is starting to drag, but it’s been a strange week. The always are after a week off I think. The start of the week goes quick as you catch up with the happenings while you’ve been, in my case there was also a trip to London on Tuesday for time to fly by. Then things just go slow for some reason. I guess the weather doesn’t help, decided to cycle in yesterday thinking that the weather looked quite nice at 7am, not thinking there would be crazy amounts of rain in the afternoon. At least the trains were running, albeit delayed.

Still fine again now, and to be prepared I brought both the car and bike in today, just in case. But enough about the weather from me, let’s move on to our End of Day, just one submission today and it’s Matt from the Comms Team:

Chris is at Download, Mand and James are working from home, Bob and I have been running about like blue bottomed insects. That’s about the size of it. At least it hasn’t rained again (yet).

On the bright side a number of sekrit projekts have moved on to the point where you should be hearing about them soon. Yay!

And that’s all for today, time to go home I think and do the ironing. Hmm, ironing or staying and running off some reports, it’s a close call. Have fun out there… we’ll be back again on the morrow…

No Comments »

This is, for me, the Week of the Missing Zeds.

What a day. What a day!!!! Starting off with only 4 hours’ sleep because I ate too much cheese before bed meant that my day got off to a very sleepy start! However, I did have some very interesting dreams, including all my friends had moved into purple caravans. Now, I could waffle on about that a bit more, but as I was writing this, it started to rain. And I mean RAIN. Entire footpaths outside our office vanished under torrents of water! Scenes of two years ago started rushing through peoples’ heads. So we packed up a little early and headed home, just in case… hence this very late and rather short posting!

So, first up, here is Mark in CSC:

We are sat here in a not so sunny Sheffield (in fact, it’s raining). What happened to the sun last week? Oh well, prob thats our summer! But, it’s Wednesday, and ever closer to the weekend.

Today:
President Carl (He told me to put that!) has been dealing with escalations. VIVA EL PRESIDENTE!
Hayleigh has been working in the provisioning pool, placing orders for new customers and updating customers on existing orders. She is back today after an eventful birthday weekend. (Happy Birthday Hayleigh).
Robert has been working in the house move pool, moving customers to new properties. He went to see Oasis on Sunday, and said they were awesome (Ed: I went on Thursday and loved it too!).
Alice has been working in the migrations pool, moving customers over to Plusnet from other suppliers. It took her all day to eat a vanilla slice (Ed: it was the size of a small house, that’s why. OK I am kidding, I never saw it!).
Andy has been working in the provisioning pool with Hayleigh. He’s going to spend tonight sorting out his new flat.
Malik has been working in the XML rejections and delayed orders pool, updating customers on the progress of their orders. He plans to chill out for rest of the evening after he finishes work.
I have been working in the migrations and house moves pool. I will be spending tonight playing the Sims 3 (which I recommend).

Songs of choice this week are Underdog by Kasabian and Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas.

TTFN and see you soon,

Mark T

Thanks for your posting Mark… and poor Colin in Web Dev didn’t check the weather forecast this morning…

It’s suddenly turned VERY wet in Sheffield which could be slightly annoying at 1730, since I don’t have my jacket with me!

I’ve mostly spent today doing some adminstration type stuff, making sure everything is handed over to various people.

Mark says: I’ve been dealing with website problems today. This afternoon I’ve spent some time in the website’s dim and dusty attic space, looking through old web pages we really should have thrown away years ago. We’re such hoarders!

Duffy, when asked, just said *ping*… I’m not sure what he’s been doing, other than sitting with Jonny for a while.

Jonny has apparently been working on Support Home wireframe layouts, which I’m guessing means he’s been trying out ideas for re-designing the support homepage.

James has been working on some front end changes for one of our websites.

Dan’s been doing some designing – not with paints and crayons, but some techincal designs for a project he’s picking up and doing some refactoring on another project.

Gary says he’s been building, but since I don’t see a pile of bricks near him, I can only assume he means webpages.

Now I just cross my fingers, and hope the rain is off in about 55 minutes!

I don’t know if the rain did vanish, or if Colin swam home: I scarpered back to Manchester where there was just a hint of drizzle. How refreshing!

Anyway, it’s late, best post this and grab my Horlicks. Sleep well everyone (and no cheese for me!).

Ali McGowan

No Comments »

Hello readers,

Not sure how I’ve been dragged into editing the EOD again, but here goes anyway.

First up today we’ve got Heather.

On a day when the Sales floor seemed a little sparse, the teams delivered outstanding results. Maybe this was in celebration of the 85th Anniversary of Donald Duck’s film debut! (CAUTION: tedious link coming) Apparently he is quackers for Plusnet’s service! There was a lot of off site activity today, mostly around raising brand awareness. In Darren’s absence, adam stepped up to the plate of chief tea maker and ‘call waiting’ shouter. And boy did he do a good job! Thanks for helping out Adam. COT was much quieter than yesterday, Monday’s are always very busy, but we delivered some excellent results, saving at least 50% of potential cancellations. Well done Team!

Sales was also quiter than Monday, but still a steady supply of calls were converted at the usually high standard, with Homephone attachment above 40% once more. Jay is off on holiday in a few days, so has come in looking like David Dickinson’s better half! I think someone has been hitting the ‘beds’ before she goes away! Have a great time Jay! Everyone else worked their socks off to ensure all calls were answered promptly. Thanks guys!

Next and unfortunately the final update of the day is Matt from Comms.

Bob has been happy this morning, and grumpy this afternoon. Much better than usual. He’s been on twitter, in the forums, looking at usenet, and has been service statusing and networks change controlling.

Chris has been tweeting, looking at TR69 and yawning a lot. Also some bogus signup stuff and some service status.

James has been in forums and on the phone for a fair portion of the day, and has also been tweeting the cricket results.

Mand has been in meetings all day. When she wasn’t in meetings she has been looking at problems and Home Phone.

I’ve mainly been foraging for nuts.

Now I’m going to hand this to our lovely editor CParr so he can take out all the bits that make him look bad, and make me look bad in return. Ah well. Have a lovely evening, all. (ed I wouldn’t do that… would I?)

That’s it for the day, see you tomorrow.

1 Comment »