Good news today came in the form of a BBC news article covering the results from the recent customer satisfaction survey carried out by consumer comparison site Broadband Choices.
The survey of 4,000 broadband households, conducted by independent research and consulting agency YouGov, asked consumers to rate their ISP against various criteria including quality and reliability, download time, clarity of billing and pricing, after sales support, value for money and speed of service activation.
PlusNet topped the table with a massive *79%* of PlusNet customers that were surveyed saying they were satisfied with their broadband service across *all six categories*.
The purpose of this blog is to help you diagnose your broadband fault. There is a fault diagnosis flowchart to accompany this, if you wish.
I’m quite sure nearly everyone reading that will be familiar with the above phrase, most of you because it’s happened to you on occasion and you’ve needed to call your ISP’s helpdesk to find out what’s going on, and many of you because you’ve had someone on the phone to you uttering those words. Either way, our sympathies are with you.
Before we go on to do any diagnosis I should explain why home diagnostics are necessary and why we can’t just ‘push our magic button’ and make the service work again.
More…
Crikey the CSC isn’t the best at getting these blogs done so I’m delighted to have been the first to post other than Chris’ revealing customer satisfaction posts for the past few months, but that’s because we are all working so hard to provide you the very best in service as you would expect.
I normally work within the business team having worked at PlusNet for over 2 years now but over the past month I have been on a secondment as a TSM (Technical Shift Manager) and currently I’m the Floor Manager within the CSC assisting the TSMs on getting all of your contacts to us either by phone, support ticket, or letter handled as efficiently as possible and retaining that award winning quality.
Having never focused on team performances so much this has presented various challenges for me over the past few weeks, but in each one its been extremely rewarding to have that challenge given to me. We have also had several other experienced agents stepping up to cover managers in recent weeks, so whilst the managerial side of things may have been lower in experience than normal the enthusiasm and new ideas along with PlusNet experience should have covered this in most circumstances so as not to impact on our customer experience for you contacting us or vice versa.
As you may be aware within the CSC we have 3 teams that rotate covering technical calls in addition to customer service and sales calls. These teams also have agents trained to work on ADSL faults either via the initial contact to us or having tested it to handle it once raised to BT. The teams operate on a 4 day working cycle working from 7am to 4pm for the first two days and then from 2pm to 11pm, followed by two days off. So if Team A are in at 7am they are joined by Team B at 2pm so the whole of the main working day and hours are covered, not forgetting an analyst from each team who will also be on nights when they work from 10.45pm until 7.15am.
In addition to this we have a Cancellations team, dedicated sales and customer service teams, a provisioning team that handles all activations of various type such as house moves and new sign ups which is called BOT (Broadband Operations Team) and my normal home of Business Support offering support solely for our business customers on our business products. These teams have there own working hours due to business needs such as BOT have to be available when BT are so work 9am until 6pm, the Business team are available from 8am until 8pm.
So in handling one of the technical shifts, or as floor manager, what type of things would I have to get involved in? Well it can be quite literally anything. It could be making sure agents are getting their holiday requests sanctioned to taking an escalated customer call. It could be doing QOS where we mark the agent’s performance on randomly selected calls or tickets, it could be being in a performance meeting with the other managers looking at what went right or wrong and what could be done to improve on that. Quite simply we could be asked to do anything and although it may sound clichéd no two days are ever the same.
The first thing a manager would do on arriving for their shift would be to make sure we have no staff who have rang in ill. Having done this we can then look at the resource we have available and assign roles for the day so the agents get tasked with their primary role such as call handling and then they know what target levels they should be aiming to perform too. We then need to make sure that our portal statistics have been updated to advise customers of the average ticket and fault handling times. We always try to arrange for scheduled account changes to be done in the morning too if the night shift have been unable to action them so that has to be assigned as customers are expecting to be moved to their new product. We would also need to know what, if any, issues have arisen at work over the previous few hours or so since we were last in that could be impacting for the team upon our arrival. So if any scheduled maintenance has been done has it completed? Has it caused any problems that are then being investigated further to the maintenance? By the time you have done all of this 9am is quickly upon you and the other teams such as BOT start arriving so you then may need to juggle your resource again depending on their work flows and staffing levels. All the team managers will meet around 9am to discuss various resource affecting issues to make sure the whole department is staffed as well as possible. From 9am onwards you start to notice that the call volumes start to rise so hopefully all the hard work we have then put into resource will start to be reflected in answering your queries as quickly as possible.
The team manager on shift then has various reports to produce and write up and get these posted to senior management so they can review the performance and we provide them a plan on what will need looking at through the day as main areas of concentration. It could be that due to a higher then average number of sign ups that the BOT team are looking at why some of the orders have failed automatically, it could be a simple reason such as the customer already has ADSL and hasn’t provided a MAC but it has to be addressed and we have to show to our senior management that the issues have been seen and more importantly are being addressed.
All of a sudden lunchtime is with us and we have to make sure that our staff can go up get their lunch whilst still making sure the calls are being answered promptly. This is an area I have been looking at to try and improve things even more for both staff and our customer experience. As its lunchtime we may well get additional calls from customers who want to ring us on their break but we cant just say to our teams they cant not eat as they have to have fuel in them to get them through the day. As with many things within life its a fine balancing act and I’m in the process of trying various different ways of handling this, some may work well others may not but its a vitally important area we must continue working hard to get even better for you.
At 2pm the late shift start so once more resource can be looked at as we have a whole extra team to use for 2hrs until the morning shift leave. It may mean even more call takers for that period, it may mean helping one of the specialist teams such as BOT out with any work flows they have. It could mean that we can then take one of the teams for a team meeting or training which is not possible to do at any other time, but normally Call Answer Rate (CAR) rises dramatically at this time due to being the part of the day when maximum number of staff for the day is in. As a manager you may take this time to use the extra resource to handle 1-2-1’s with your team to appraise their monthly performance and to look towards the following month as well as the remaining part of the quarter.
Many times during the day you will get asked varied questions from your teams which could either be a quick 30seconds clarifying something and advising them, or it could escalate to an issue that you become part of and may require additional support elements to be involved and could become an issue that could then take a lot more of your time as part of the investigation.
We also do constant QOS (Quality of Service) checks on our analysts. This will involve monitoring them via their calls and tickets to help maintain a high standard along with highlighting any development needs for the analysts so those can be addressed as quickly as possible. All the QOS is fedback to the analysts so anything that is positive or negative can be seen and explained as that is the best way for them to develop. We can then assist in team training, and side-by-side coaching. To assist with this we are getting an analyst who will be stepping up as dedicated QOS analyst and they will develop further training plans based on the information they get from results of their work. So as you can see we take this very seriously to make sure that your getting the very best response as you deserve and put a lot of time into getting this as high as possible for you. Hopefully with some of the recent awards we have started to collect this commitment is starting to bear fruit. One of our TSMs Simon posted more on this earlier in the year. To read about it check click http://community.plus.net/csc/2007/07/01/quality-of-customer-support-followup/
Did I also mention the meetings we have to attend throughout the company to see what new things are being done could impact on the CSC, the return to work meetings after staff sickness, making sure our EODs are done from our teams, authorising holiday requests, developing action plans for any agents who have had extended sickness periods or have been missing targets, writing blogs 
, covering for other TSMs if away, recruitment telescreening and assessment day planning, escalated calls and tickets
Well as you can see this overview of what a TSM has to do is pretty much an endless job and certainly makes our days fly by as we just don’t get time to stop, its a good thing I don’t smoke otherwise I would get serious withdrawal symptoms whilst at work.
People values are one of the cores of the PlusNet Cornerstones, and are listed as follows.
Be open, honest and respectful
Demonstrate drive, commitment and passion
Be accountable and participative by taking ownership and responsibility
Be creative, innovative and improvement focused
Support, educate and trust others
I don’t know about you, but when I first read these I did have some concerns. I’ve read Dilbert, and I’ve also worked in the public sector and as a result I have experienced a number of half (and even full) day workshops on objectives, mission statements and any number of other expense-justifying corporate-isms.
The thing that surprised me about these people values is, they really work - mostly because they aren’t deliberately mentioned at any opportunity, or shoved in your face whenever possible. I’ll attempt to explain why.
Well being open, honest and respectful is easy to see (not necessarily easy to do though). It helps that everyone tries, when someone shows you respect it’s a lot easier to respect them back, likewise with openness and honesty. As a CSC agent on the phone you can actually open your mouth and say that you don’t agree with something that a Director has just said and granted you won’t often get a complete turnaround (though this has been known to happen!) but you will at least get an explanation of why things are like they are.
It is therefore the case that anyone at PlusNet can talk to anyone else, regardless of station, and know that their views will be taken in to account. Which is nice.
Demonstrating drive, commitment and passion. Now. This sounds to my cynical mind exactly like anything any business would workshop at new employees for hours. Hasn’t happened here. Sure, it’s been mentioned. But the reason I know it works? Monthly awards, rallies, and (almost daily, it seems) forum posts lauding the exploits of Mr X from development or Miss Y from the products team because Project Z has been launched and is a success. Or there’s been a new tool implemented in Workplace (the platform that we work on) that has saved our CSC agents hours of work per week. It doesn’t have to take you hours, you don’t have to work day and night for two weeks. If it makes a difference, and you played a part, everyone loves you. It’s a good feeling.
Back to the managementspeak - Be accountable and participative by taking ownership and responsibility. As I said above, people do volunteer – partly I’m sure for the recognition, but for me it’s honestly because what I have volunteered to do (for example, this blog post) will actually make a difference to some people. Whether that’s who I work with, who I work for, or someone else entirely - it’s good to know. In addition it’s refreshing not to have to play the blame game at work. There’s no blame culture, simply because people know who’s working on what and will hold their hands up if the ball has been dropped. Once that is the case everyone can get on with working to sort out the issue rather than trying to shunt the blame about – and no, there’s no punishment and re-education doesn’t mean a 1984 style brainwashing. Provided you know what you did wrong everything is good and everyone can get on with more important things.
Being creative, innovative and improvement focused. Again, with all of the above in effect it appears that the working culture is such that if you can see where something would make a difference it’s a simple matter of posting the idea in a forum. This will then be discussed, you can persuade your colleagues to post supporting the idea – basically it’s as easy to make it known as it is to think ‘oh, it’s not worth it’ (and of course there’s the added incentive of being recognised) – and that’s it. When it’s that easy to make a difference, people put the effort (such as it is) in.
And finally, support, educate and trust others.
I think this is what has made the difference for me in being happy here, as clichéd as that sounds. Someone will give you a job to do, and then leave you to do it. Doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s – as above – actually something that makes a difference and you’re trusted to do that it’s quite a liberating feeling. You are trusted to do your work, and in turn you can trust that others will do theirs.
This also is good in that you know that your colleagues have your back should you need a hand. There’s always someone either nearby or on the end of a phone or jabber message that can help you do what you need to.
That’s the great thing about these people values. They aren’t just a set of rules to be applied, or a set of mission statements/company objectives/corporate guidelines. They are actually a constant across the business and in use all the time, without – and this is the really great part - anyone actually needing to think about it.
Cornerstones are the whats, whys and hows of PlusNet. They began life back in the early nineties when we began offering non subscription dial up access under the pseudonym ‘Force9′ - Essentially a reaction to the packages Freeserve were offering around the same time. This led to an extremely hectic month with us jumping from about 10,000 customers and a comfortable manual backend to about 300,000 customers and a need for something a little more streamlined than having to manually add email boxes via command line!
We had a choice. There was a lot more work that suddenly needed doing. We could have employed a large amount of new staff, or we could find another way to do the work that didn’t need manual intervention. Thus was born the PlusNet business model.
Automation was indeed the way forward. There was still a need for staff growth, in particular the development department due to the large amount of software that had to be written – essentially a platform capable of running an Internet provisioning service. PlusNet did indeed grow from here, leading to a need for more formal operating procedures.
Fortunately because we started small, people were used to knowing everything that was being done, by whom, and why. It seemed obvious that this should continue, simply because running the business would be a lot easier with this information to hand. Therefore it was decided that this model should continue to grow along with the business, to make sure that all the new people coming on board understood the whats, whys and hows.
And now, in an attempt to help everyone else understand them as well, we will be publishing a series of blogs explaining the many and varied parts of Cornerstones, what they mean to staff and how they make a difference to their working day.
Is there anything you want to know about? Think this is a good idea? Think it sucks? Please tell us. Comment on this blog, join us on our forums, or even raise a ticket and we’ll see what we can do for you.
Matt Taylor
If you’ve ever wanted to cancel a service/product you’ve probably spoken to a retentions agent. It is a retentions agent’s job to put right any problems you have with the service and ultimately try to keep your custom. Like any company we need customers to stay happy. But it isn’t just about that.
You’re probably thinking all we do is throw discounts at customers that are leaving but the retentions team is so much more than that. We want you, the customer to be happy with the service you’re receiving, whichever broadband supplier you may choose to be with. We provide advice and information so even if you do end up leaving us, you can be sure you’ve made an informed decision. Like Plusnet as a company, we pride ourselves on our honesty. We don’t lie to customers to encourage them to stay with us.
So thats our job, but who are we?
We are the retentions/cancellations/care team and we work on the CSC in Sheffield and have our own desk! We work the ticket pools, take transfers from other areas of the CSC and take calls directly from customers. Some of us are tech trained and this can mean that we don’t have to ask tech support to call a customer back.
This is definitely an interesting job and can be challenging, keeping us on our toes. We get alot of customers that are adamant they want to leave. Reasons such as faults, cost, free hardware with other providers, moving abroad and consolidating services with one provider are common. These are often valid reasons to leave a company, so being up against them alot can lower the morale of the team. The fact that we work for a company with such a fantastic reputation does make it easier. Most of the reasons for leaving boil down to cost. We never profess to be the cheapest supplier but if the figures are right in recent surveys, we’re definitely the best. Customers generally know how good our service is and know the quality of our support. This definitely helps us when retaining customers.
Well there is an incredible sense of community on the retentions team. We always support each other and give advice where necessary. The banter on the team is second to none. Everyone is down-to-earth and we all share the same sense of humour. We have a real team spirit and this is demonstrated by the fact that everything is done as a team. When we succeed, we succeed as a team and when we fail, we fail as a team. We are probably one of the most tight knit teams on the CSC.
You can always expect good customer service from Plusnet but we always go that extra mile to ensure you have the best broadband experience possible. We want to break the mould and show our customers that we’re not just doing a job but we actually care about what we’re doing and the people we are helping. Sometimes things do go wrong, you lose your confidence in a company and you decide to cancel. We are the ones to restore that confidence and put things right!
Alan Epton (Retentions Analyst)
With what it probably the heaviest period of sustained rainfall I’ve ever seen in this country, let alone in June, it’s worth bearing in mind that these adverse weather conditions that we are seeing will have an affect on broadband connections.
Many of our customers may see periods of slow speeds and potentially intermittent or sustained loss of connection as a result of the heavy rainfall. As a result of this, PlusNet’s helpline may be extremely busy at times and we would recommend raising any fault via http://help.plus.net after performing the usual hardware and wiring checks.
Here’s to hoping for some more traditional summer weather! Unfortunately there’s no such thing as unlimited sunshine either.
Hi, my name is Brad Knights-Toomer and I am one of the Technical Support Analysts here at Plusnet. As we are split into three teams, we work 2 early shifts (7am - 4pm), 2 late shifts (2pm - 11pm) and have 2 days off. This is the typical shift pattern over 6 days and it allows for as many analysts in for the peak periods of the day.
I am going to write about a typical early shift on Monday 18th June.
6:30am - This is the time when I get into work. It is slightly early but it does give me time to look through the various events that have been occurring the past two days when I have been off. I also take time to set everything up ready for the day ahead. The rest of the team come in between 6:15am and 7am for a 7am start.
7:00am - We find out what workflow (calls, tickets, faults, other) we are working today, I am doing the Billing pool until 9am and then on calls so should expect to answer around 50 calls today. The Billing pool involves Support Tickets where customers have normally asked for a MAC key but some outstanding payments are due. If the customer has remained with us then there is no need to take this payment but if the customer has left, we have to contact the customer regarding this. Don’t worry, we don’t contact customers before 9am 
8:00am - Between now and 9:00am, the rest of the business start coming in to work. Everything seems to have gone as normal so far this morning, we have taken quite a few calls which is usual for a Monday morning.
9:30am - Busy as usual, we have entered the peak time for a Monday morning. Calls have been coming in quick but they do not have any similar pattern to them. They are the usual calls, fault raising, email setup, fault updates and failed billing. Unfortunately our Call View screen has gone down so I cannot see how many customers are in the queue but I do expect it to be around 5 - 10.
9:45am - The call queue has shot up to 16 customers. Everyone we have here is busy trying to get this wait time down. Still no pattern to calls emerging.
10:30am - It has been a busy morning so far! 20 calls in queue. Most of the calls today have been either raising faults or faults updates. We are currently looking into ways to improve this area so customers will not need to call for updates as often.
11:45am - It seems to be the peak time of year for house moves as we have had a lot of customers ringing to check the status of their Broadband house move orders. The call queue has gone down as well to 7 customers with a wait time of around 7 minutes. I fully expect this number to jump up as customers start to go on their lunch breaks from work and ring us up.
12:30pm - As predicted, the call queue has shot up again with customers using some of their lunch break to chase up Broadband issues.
1:30pm - The call queue has come right down now, mostly due to more customers being back at work. Also within the next 30 minutes, agents on the next team will start to come in to work. This will mean double the amount of agents answering the phone so there should not be as long a wait in the queue. Currently so far the average wait time is 3 minutes 49 seconds, which is not too bad considering we have taken over 600 calls already. As you can expect, the call centre is bustling with busy agents taking calls, answering tickets, fixing faults, placing orders, retaining customers, and communicating to customers via the forums.
2:10pm - Both teams are in now and answering calls. The call queue has gone down to zero so any customers would be able to get straight through. During 2pm and 4pm, it is the best time to call as we do have double the amount of staff on to take calls. By now, we have taken over 700 calls which is around normal for the first day of the week. As there are no calls in the queue, there is another opportunity to answer customer questions raised in the Help Assistant. There are about 170 Questions in the ticket pool which we will go through. This should be reduced throughout the afternoon and mostly cleared by our Nights Staff.
3:10pm - Into my last hour of the shift. It has gone very quick today due to how busy it has been. So far today, we have taken over 850 calls and the average wait time is down to 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Everyone has been right on key today so things have gone smoothly, which is always a good thing!
4:05pm - The shift is over for me now. It has been very very busy today, myself taking 46 calls between 9am - 4pm and answering over 60 tickets. All in all, the total calls taken so far is just under 1000 which is a nice busy day for everyone! It has been a good day and it feels good to help customers with their Broadband. As my team mates and I get ready to go home and relax, the rest of the business are still plowing on with their work. The average call wait today has been 3 minutes and a couple of seconds, which has decreased throughout.
I hope this blog has been insightful and given you an idea of what goes on in a typical shift.
Brad
Hello to all CSC Blog readers, may I take this opportunity to introduce myself to you all, for those of you who don’t already know me I am currently Head of the CSC here at PlusNet and have been for the last 4 years. Quality of support is key to what we do, for me speed of answer and response is important but offering good support when customers do contact us is equally if not more important, so I wanted to give you an insight into the results we are currently seeing and some of the things we are doing. We currently measure the quality of support in various different ways.
TSM (Technical Shift Manager) remote monitoring
TSMs are tasked with completing a number of quality assessments on individuals within their team, at least 4 on a daily basis. It is their responsibility to ensure that there is a 50/50 split between tickets and calls. We use slightly different criteria for each work stream, however the required levels on each is 85%. You may ask why this isn’t 100% and this is due to the fact that the final 15% is an over and above score, covering things such as excellent empathy, understanding etc. The process is for the TSM to complete the assessment and then feedback the results to the individual. This includes both areas in which the individual achieved or over achieved and areas in which they need to focus and the support they will be given to improve. This then forms the basis for objectives for the next month. TSMs complete over 200 of these types of measures on a monthly basis and this forms part of their objectives.
TSM (Technical Shift Manager) Side By Side coaching
On a weekly basis TSMs are tasked with spending 4 hours per week on this activity, if their team members are fairly new then they will concentrate on these individuals and they will do more than the required amount. This activity involves the TSM sitting with the individual analyst, listening to calls and observing tickets and then providing immediate feedback and support on both technical areas for improvement and soft skills. In this instance the results are not necessarily documented unless there is a need for future actions and activities to be captured and followed up on.
I am conscious that these are all internally generated results and feel it is important to ensure we have a balanced overview and perspective of the support we offer. Therefore we also collate and review customer feedback on tickets, faults and calls.
Customer feedback on calls
Every 3rd call where the phone system can match the CLI (phone number) of the caller with an account in our database, we send out a link, via email to a survey to assess the quality of the support. This is collated on a monthly basis by the Comms team; previously this was collated by the TSMs. The results are published to the business with a list of issues and actions based upon the results. This then forms part of the operational plan for the coming month/s. I have attached below the overall results of the survey for those of you that are interested in looking at this and showing the progressive improvements we have made over the last few months, you need to bear in mind, that last month we changed the measures from 4 options to 8, this is why the graph may seem confusing at first glance. Our target is to ensure that over 50% of all rating are in the top 2 categories, very satisfied and extremely satisfied.
Customer feedback on tickets
Every time a customer closes a ticket we ask them to rate the level of the support they have received, this is currently rated with 3 faces, smiley, neutral and sad. This is reviewed daily by the late TSM, who reviews all “sad” ratings, gives feedback and support to the analyst where this is required and if it is necessary contacting the customer to take ownership of the issue. Again you can find graph below detailing the responses we have had. It is interesting to note that some “sad” face ratings are due to the customer not liking our answers, in these circumstances the answer is correct and there is nothing else we could have done, i.e. wording this differently etc. As you can see this again shows very positive results
Customer feedback on Faults
We recently launched beta phase of feedback when customer faults are closed. This will be used to measure our performance in this area. We are currently in the process of collating this. Once this has been collated we will be using this to review and amend the processes and procedures and work to improve the customer experience on faults in general.
Future developments
We are currently working on a “Mystery shopper” assessment, which we will use for key processes and procedures and will again help us to audit and improve processes and procedures and measure the quality of the support in these areas. Simon, who is a TSM within the dept has this has one of his objectives, so watch this space for further updates. We have in the past and will continue to maintain the focus we have on the quality of support in all workflows, there will be times when we drop the ball and where new starters who are in “learn” mode will make mistakes, however I hope you can see that we are working to minimize this, we still have areas for improvement and we will be driving this onwards and upwards throughout the Year.
House Moves: Processes, Payments and Problems
Moving house is something that everyone is likely to do at some stage in their lifetime. Moving broadband from your old house to your new one is something a number of customers ask us to do. I’d like to outline the processes that we at PlusNet perform to move your broadband from one address to another, costs incurred and some problems which we may experience along the way.
Processes and charging
In order to allow our customers to request such a house move, there is a page on our website that allows you to make this request and asks you for all of the relevant information. This page can be found here:
http://www.plus.net/my.html?s=0&action=adsl_reprovision
This page will ask you when you want your house move to occur, as well as asking you for the new telephone number and the address at which you want us to move your broadband service to. It also asks you when you want your existing service at your current address to be removed.
Because we have to pay BT Wholesale £40 to activate a telephone line with a broadband service, we give you the option to either pay this upfront, or to defer the charge. What this means is that if you choose to defer the charge, we will pay the £40 charge to BT on your behalf and if you stay with us for over 12 months, we will write off the charge.
Unfortunately, when we place our orders with BT Wholesale, there are associated timescales with cancelling and ordering a new service. Currently, a cease order takes 5 working days (although there is work ongoing within BT Wholesale to reduce this to 1 working day) and a provide order also takes 5 working days.
When you are requesting a house move and changing your telephone number, we can request a new provide as soon as your new telephone number is operational, taking 5 working days.
However, if you are keeping the same telephone number we are, owing to a long term flaw within the BT Wholesale ordering system, unable to place a new provide order until the cease at your address is completed. This means that the process will take approximately 12 working days (5 days for the cease, 2 days for BT’s database to update and 5 days for the provide) In real terms, this equates to about two and a half weeks. The implementation of the one day cease will reduce this to 8 working days, which is great news for our customers that wish to keep their telephone number when moving house – something that many people (quite understandably) choose to do.
There is also an option to do something called a “simultaneous provide”. This allows you to move both your telephone number and your broadband service on the same day. Please bear in mind though that this requires a considerable notice period, preferably about 2 weeks. You will also need to call BT Retail (150) and ask them to move your telephone number to your new address and ask them for a simultaneous provide code at the same time. You can then provide us with this code, which will allow us to request that BT Wholesale move your broadband on the same day. It’s worth bearing in mind that the success rate for simultaneous orders isn’t fantastic, partly owing to the extended lead time when placing them, along with other issues such as receiving incorrect simultaneous codes from BT (these codes are also referred to as “start reference” or “fast peter” codes by BT).
Potential problems
As with anything in life, problems can arise, even with something that may sound as simple as moving a broadband service. I’ll outline some of the potential problems that can be experienced which may cause delays in the re-provision of the service.
DACS
A DACS is a Digital Access Carrier System. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Access_Carrier_System
I would generally refer to DACS as simply just a line sharing device that does not support a broadband service (it also reduces the potential speed of a regular dial up service). There are two different types of DACS. An internal one, which would require a BT Engineer visit to remove it, which we would need to book with BT Wholesale on your behalf with your prior consent.
Unsurprisingly, the other type of DACS is one external to your premises. This can vary from something on the outside of your house, to something on your street, to in extreme cases, something buried under a road which then requires BT to gain planning permission from your local council to remove.
We can experience delays in internal DACS removal as we need to contact you first to find out any suitable times for BT to visit and BT generally insist on 5 working days notice in order to do this. With external DACS work, this has to go through BT Wholesale’s Planning Department to determine potential costs of performing the work. This add to the potential delays. BT also have a budget of £1,000 for DACS removal. If the work that is required exceeds this amount, they will not perform the work which unfortunately means that our ability to provide an ADSL service is impossible.
Exchange Capacity
Every exchange has a finite amount of capacity. This means that they can only support a certain number of broadband services at any one time. In busy exchanges this can result in what is essentially a queue for service. When the exchange becomes “full” we have to wait for other broadband services to be removed before new orders will be accepted. This again, causes delays in the order becoming completed. We will contact BT on a regular basis to try and gain a timescale for when the orders is likely to occur, but often this is difficult owing to the length of the “queue” being unknown.
Tags-on-the-line
Tags-on-the-line are essentially “markers” left on the line by a previous service. Imagine you have just moved house and asked PlusNet to move your service to your new house. However, the previous owner of the house also had a broadband service with a different ISP. The previous tenant then did not ask his ISP to cancel the service or the ISP failed to remove the service from the line correct. This then results in a “Tag” being left on the line preventing us from placing an order.
We then have to contact BT Wholesale’s Tags Team on 0800-1690934, which is a service open for both ISPs and customers to call to determine what kind of Tag is present on the telephone line. They will then be able to remove any service on the line, although this currently takes 5 working days for the cease to complete (remember I spoke about one day cease earlier).
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/internet/customer_service/tagonline/
Again, this adds to any potential delays, but we will always call BT Wholesale on your behalf to get as much information about the delays being experienced before letting you know why we are experiencing problems in completing your order.
Incompatible Products
Incompatible Products are services on telephone lines that prevent the ability to have a broadband order placed. I spoke about DACS earlier, but there are a few other instances which prevent broadband compatibility. These include alarm systems, PBX’s, ISDN amongst others. If we are unable to gain this information from BT Wholesale, we may need to ask you to speak to BT Retail, as often we are unable to ascertain the type of incompatibility and BT Retail will not pass this information on to us as we are not their customer – we deal exclusively with BT Wholesale.
That’s pretty much all I can think of at this moment in time! As you can see, it’s not quite that simple process that many people may believe and I hope I’ve been able to provide an insight into why delays may occur.
Here at Plusnet we're always trying to use clever open source things to make our lives easier. Sometimes we write our own and make other people's lives easier too!
We sell broadband, phone, VoIP and more to homes and businesses in the UK. Winner of 9 out of 11 Categories in the 2008 USwitch survey. Winner of "Best Consumer ISP" at 2008 ISPA awards. Voted number 1 in the Broadband Choices 2008 survey.
© Plusnet plc All Rights Reserved. E&OE
Community Site News is powered by WordPress
