It’s been a typically busy week here in Sheffield and obviously it’s Children in Need today! Not that we need an excuse but we’ve all been getting in the spirit by stuffing our faces with a variety of savory and sugary goods.  Nom Nom Nom… I’ll let this weeks posters tell you more!

First we have Kev reporting from Business Support…

This is written by Kev and I will not mention football or hands. I have been on the business team for 3 weeks on a 4 week secondment and enjoying the different variety of roles you do whilst on this very busy team.

This week has been very busy mainly due to the extremely bad weather over the last 3 – 4 days. This has caused a variety of issues with broadband lines and phone lines which has caused an increase in calls and faults being raised. This has made this week particularly stressful as there just don’t seem to be enough time to do everything.

We have been in a charitable mood today as it is children in need, we have purchased home made cakes and other goodies that other members of staff have cooked, all to raise money for children in need. This does man that the diet goes out the window but it is for a good cause after all.

Well I have to go now to deal with the faults that have been raised.

Kev.

Gemma from HR next.. looks like Jen has a week off EOW duty…

So, its Children in need, cakes have been made and cakes have been eaten. There were even mini pizzas, pigs in blankets and home made bread up for grabs…..yum.

And while all this was going on, Jen was helping to get things sorted for Gavin Patterson’s visit today. Gavin is the CEO of BT retail. He presented a Retail update to everyone this afternoon and held an open Q & A session. Plusnet can be a tough crowd but he kept his cool!

There has also been a lot of work done collating Company information for the Best Companies survey. We may have mentioned this in previous weeks, and yes were still working on it however it’s a micro detail questionnaire and we want Plusnet to be reflected in its true glory.

There was some interesting discussion earlier this week when Therese and I ran a workshop for managers on dealing with difficult situations. We’re running another one next week, so until next week, hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

Gem and the HR team.

Here’s Neil with an update from Networks…

Networks were very very busy this week, we’ve got some cakes to eat/eaten some cakes from the Children in Need cake sale and now it’s the weekend.

Apart from cakes however, We’ve done lots of work this week to try and resolve the problems with network performance, more details on this can be seen on service status and on the priority problem on the website and we’ve been continuing on our plans for network capacity for the next 15 months.

We also been bashing though the usual tickets and problems

Anyways it’s time to go to the pub.

Have a good weekend all.

Last but not least, here’s Orbrey from Com…Digital Care…

It’s been a week of illness in Digital Care this week. Chris, Bob and Andy have been coughing and hacking and sneezing at the desk, and Mand wasn’t feeling too good this afternoon. Likewise I’ve been having hot flushes and feeling dizzy. Thankfully it’s Friday, though it’s sad there’ll be no beer o’ clock today.

It’s a busy time for us at the moment, lots of forum posts to pick up and all sorts of comms to do of both internal and external varieties. It’s been nice to make posters for a change too, and a great way to let the rest of the business know about any changes we’re making.

Not to mention the cake sale for Children in Need today.

I thought I told you not to mention that?

Cheers all. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll see you bright and breezy on Monday morning.

Lovely.. you can see what the impact the bake-off’s had.. EVERYONE mentioned it – that doesn’t even happen in the Summer when we’re all melting!

On the topic of weather, it’s been a typically wet and wintering week here and while I’d normally moan about that I won’t today today as there’s a lot worse going on  further up north in Cumbria.  We saw similar scenes around here a few years ago and I’m sure I speak for all here at Plusnet when I wish those affected well, and hope they can get through the next few weeks safe and well.

That’s all this week folks.

See ya!

So much for the diet eh folks?

 Pictured:  Here’s Ali buying a Pudsey bun.

Miaow from some black cats and on with the show!!!! First up, Jen in HR:

Once upon a time in Plusnet Land, in the year of Two Thousand and Nine, the thirteenth day of the eleventh month fell on a Friday. Folklore around these parts tells of very strange happenings upon this day. Indeed, the HR team can atest to this.
All day, strange noises have been interrupting out attempts to complete our Best Companies application. Icy breezes have been fluttering the pages of our new starter documents. Gremlins have been interfering with our computers and old references we typed months ago have been spluttered out of the printer. Numbers were appearing where they shouldn’t be on spreadsheets and no-one seemed to know why *cough*. If you do dare to step out upon this eve…take care! After all, it is Friday the Thirteenth!

Next up, it’s me!

I tried to reverse delegate this update back up to my manager, but he cleverly convinced me that I was definitely best placed to write the Business Improvement team update. I think that’s why he’s in charge.

Anyway, this week I’ve picked up a couple of new areas. One biggy is knowledge management. Might sound dull, but actually, good knowledge management is key to helping our business grow – and making sure we deliver excellent customer service. I’ll be spending time over the next few months working on a strategy and helping deliver a solution that means all our Plusnet knowledge is held in an easy to use, easy to access format and of course is up to date.

I’m also going to pick up reporting around ‘one contact resolution’. This term is all about us, more than ever, trying to resolve customer issues first time round. If you only have to contact us once, or we only have to contact you once, you get a better service and we are able to run a more efficient business – which again, ultimately benefits you, our customer. Clearly we won’t be able to fix every single issue with just one call or ticket, but by carefully monitoring where we are up to and challenging the status quo, we’ll know where to focus on to reduce the amount of contacts a customer has to make.

This ties nicely into some work that James K is doing around our provisioning process (i.e. setting up new broadband/home phone for customers), to improve the automation and improve the speed at which we can supply new services. He’s working closely with the Dev team to improve processes that are not fully automated or simply take too long. It’s a huge piece of work but we’re already seeing improvements. Good effort!

Up next is Mand in Digital Care (nee Comms):

Today (and forever more, sob) we’re a man down, as James has now officially left the building. We said goodbye to him in traditional Comms style yesterday (click here) and today many will be saying goodbye to him in traditional Plusnet style, that is to say, at the pub.

Today was otherwise filled with taunting our boss with sausage rolls (when we weren’t convincing everyone they were in fact apples), Matt placing orders, Bob and me going ‘raaaaaaaaa’, Chris scaping the debate, and Andy going down the only road he’s ever known. Apparently. (According to Andy, it’s this road)

The rest of the week was filled with happiness and joy. Or possibly bitterness and anger. I don’t know, as I spent most of it not here. I’m fairly sure it would have involved laughing at Bob, copious amounts of coffee, frogs-in-blenders*, whining, SQL errors, and darkness.

*at no point was a frog actually put in a blender.

Well, that’s good news, Mand! Next we have Andy in the Consumer team:

Consumer team returned to full strength this week, much to the relief of the head honcho who had been quietly going mad over the course of the last week or so. Unfortunately for Chris he has been plunged back into a world of Jimmy Choos and Lady GaGa, so he’s ready for another week off already!

In terms of actual work, we’ve been exceptionally busy directing the Crayola team with some large-scale colouring in, as well as working closely with our delightful Web Team, who’ve worked very hard putting together a plethora of lovely looking webby things for us. In the midst of all that, the tyrannical trio have been Taxed trying to Add Value, and look set to be for some time. Busy, busy times indeed.

Finally, and no means leastly (err, that’s not even a word!), it’s Nick in Faults, back with us after a rather nice trip abroad:

Howdy all! Good to be back in the UK after a fun packed 10 day trip to Vegas – although the cold/jetlag combination is not the greatest feeling in the world… I’ve been switching between dog tired and incredibly hyper. Add to that it’s Friday 13th and I’m definitely feeling strange today

So back into faults! Got back in and picked up where I left off with those faults which have been ongoing for a while – and was pleased to see there was only one customer still without internet when I got back, it bodes well for the week!

Things are going well with our new team member Craig, too. He’s one of the most experienced agents from the tech teams and to be honest has been spending a lot of time doing faults these last few months anyway. Although he does keep beating me at pool, which really has to stop.

Faults wise, it’s pretty much been business as usual, trying to keep on top of the intermittent connection faults is the biggest challenge as always, but we’re getting there. I’ve been handling escalations all week, trying to keep people in the loop and generally trying to tie up long standing faults. I’ve also been looking through our satisfaction survey feedback (thanks to all of you who fill those out – they really do help) and while it’s generally very positive, I’ve taken your suggestions for improvement and passed them onto management to hash out the details of what we need to do better. All in the name of progress!

Not enjoying this getting-dark-at-4pm rubbish. What’s that all about? Seriously, it’s not on. Roll on the Spring!

Thank you, everyone. And I TOTALLY agree with Nick about darkness. Rubbish!!! All that remains for me to do is not get run over on the way home (or to the pub, to meet Mr Bailey) and wish you all a fantastic weekend!

Ali McGowan

For almost a month now, we’ve been offering new phone line installations at a special low price of just £49.99 to our home broadband customers.  That’s less than half of the wholesale cost.

Now there’s even better news. We’re extending the offer right through until the 31st January 2010.
If you need to, now is the perfect time to get one installed – just call our sales line on 0845 140 0200 and we’ll do the rest.

Remember, you get a regular monthly discount for every person you refer to us who goes on to become a customer. Find out about My Referrals.

Customers connecting to the new segment will see their traffic routed through the gateway known as thn-ag2.

Whilst on the topic we also increased the bandwidth available on our 21CN network earlier today, this will benefit our Up to 20Mbps ADSL2+ customers and any ‘Up to 8Mbps’ customers who we recently emailed about moving across to the 21CN network.

Remember remember the 6th of November, because it’s the day that system problems prevented Andrew from posting when he wanted to earlier resulting in it being done much later than he originally planned!

Never mind.. on with the show as they say and firstly while you can always rely on HR, we’ve decided to give them a week off so we’ll instead start with Rowan from the Durban branch of the CSC…

Hi all,

Well… THEY PICKED ME to complete the end of week post on behalf of the CSC SA. Yippee… I haven’t done this in a while so please bear with me.

This has been a great week thus far and the weather has been ‘oh so nice’ to run off to the beach. This has been quiet a busy week for the Customer Services Team, the guys have worked really hard pushing out those tickets and answering those calls daily but making sure that it’s done in a fun jovial environment. I’m really proud of all the guys on the floor for pulling together and meeting our SLA’s and Key Performance Indicators so a big up to the team. Sadly, Preeshan our new Customer Service Manager was out on his own this week whilst the others were on study leave. Luckily Sameer, Dev and Ronel (The other Customer Service Team Leader’s) were on hand to assist him with the workload.

This weekend’s going to be really great after a long hard week so we are all really looking forward to it. Lastly, not forgetting our guest from Sheffield, Brad who is here on a training mission and strangely enough is turning a bright pink color due to the famous Durban sun!!

Anyway, that’s it for me. Cheers all.

Be cool stay safe and sooner than you realise, it’ll be Christmas already!!!

Rowan (on behalf of the SA Customer service team)

Sun? What is this Sun you speak of Rowan?  Nothing but rain and more rain in Sheffield this week, I am officially jealous!

Here’s Duffy with a quick update from an unusually quiet Web Team…

Afternoon all, Duffy here. Another busy week for the team, though we’re down a couple of bodies today, Sam being off and Nick being poorly. Get well soon!

Gary has been busily mocking up, erm, mockups. Jonny has been getting into his new role as receptionist – hopefully he’ll have a better appreciation of what the regulars have to do (hopefully his tache growing exploits are amusing the vistors to Plusnet towers, it’s only been a few days so it might be too soon – ed).

I’m trying to learn more XHTML/CSS skills so I can use crayons as well as pencils in my day-to-day job. Nick was doing some project work and we’re working on getting problem management moved from me to him.

And Phill, well, Phill once again… *tumbleweed*

I shall see if we can get some charity tache action up in a blog sometime soon, no promises at this stage.. perhaps if we make enough noise about it?

Moving on and here’s Tommo with an update from Networks…

Ah, the End of Week, and coincidentally it’s the end another week. It’s dark and miserable out so must be getting near to Christmas. So what’s been happening in the world of networks.

Unfortunately I only got the nudge to draft something for the end of week after hometime ticked around so I will have to be a bit briefer about the network activities this week.

There’s been lots of work going off to resolve the speed and performance issues that some of our customers have been seeing, we’ve seen some steady improvements through the week but there’s still more work to be done as we evaluate the success of each change.

Our migration of customers from our LLU network is almost complete, the last of the customers were migrated this week and we are now just in the mop up phase before final decommission.

And that’s all from us for this week, have a great weekend, enjoy the fireworks…

And last but by no means least, here’s Matt with the goings on from the land of Comms Analog Hate Digital Care…

Hi, everybody! I’m not Dr. Nick. Sorry for any disappointment.

Well, the week in Comms. We’ve had a few people off this week – Poor Chris has hurt his foot, and Pete’s been training. As ever we remain resolute in the face of such adversity.

Well, there’s been a fair old bit of work relating to 21CN (that’s the new up to 20Mb broadband) and as ever a lot of forum work. We’ve also (well, mainly Bob, but the rest of us too) been helping out where we can with the network too and are happy to report it’s behaving much better. We’ll keep you posted via the forums and of course the service status feed.

Not much more to report and as it’s Friday and beer o’clock it’s time for the off.

Thanks all.

That’s it for today!  Ta-ta and toodle pip.

It’s been a nice week off (cheers Kelly) but I’m back in the chair again for this weeks End of Week posting.

It’s been a hectic day (and week come to think of it) for me personally, lots of stuff published and lots of things to keep tabs on.

I’ll come back to that in a minute as Carrie from the Sales team wants to post!

Hi Everyone Its Halloween!!!!!

What a busy week we’ve had in the sales team. Its been a challenge with the amount of calls and with the BT/Manpower guys gone we’ve had to work even harder to make sure where taking every call that comes in, also everyone has had to work harder to finish sign up no macs and contact sales as we have had a big increase on these. Also a few of us have been trained on COT which has been really good to learn a different job and the COT guys have been really helpful on when we’ve asked them questions and also they’ve worked hard to increase the conversion rate on retains which have been fantastic.
We are so glad its friday, a weekend of rest, well for some of us and where expecting to have a really busy week again next week which is so exciting to sign up more customers.

Have a great weekend and don’t scare too many people.

It’s Haloween? I completely forgot! – I’ll have to keep an eye out for the hordes of dressed up students that will no doubt be flooding the streets and bars around my home right now..

On with the show and as somebody famous once said, you can always rely on HR, take it away Jen…

Haven’t done an acrostic for a while so here goes…
All of us have had a busy week
Loads of recruitment activity has been happening
Levels for performance reviews have been submitted
Of course it was Laura’s birthday on Monday, belated wishes!
We set up the Company Induction for Monday
Employee relations has been taking up Gemma’s time
Employee engagement has been taking up mine, trying to get all our company information submitted to Best Companies
Now it’s the weekend, phew. Nearly witching hour!! WHooooooo.

How on earth could I forget about Halloween? Never mind.

Right, back to me to finish off.  I think PJ was going to mention this in last weeks post but he forgot! – We’ve launched a new Windows 7 support section, take a look! We’ll be expanding it as time and needs dictate and we’ve already started this with our Windows 7 shortcut keys guide over in the Community Library!  Keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

Also there’s been a few of you worried about Wireless Security following last nights Watchdog.  We’ve updated our guide on Wi-Fi security in response to this, read Chris’s blog to find out more.

That’s all there’s time for today, see you next week!

Affectionately named ‘Plusnet 15′, we’ve already lit half of the new pipe (2 x 155Mbps segments) and have customers connecting to it as I type. If you do manage to get onto the new central then you’ll find that your traffic routes through the gateway known as thn-ag2.

This extra capacity will help us resolve the recent complaints of slow speeds during the evening, something we’ve been chronicling over on our Service Status feed.

Gordon Vaughan, clearly demonstrating that he’s smarter than the average business and partner staffer, will be putting his wits to the test on today’s Channel 4’s legendary Countdown! Not quite as dangerous as the 3 rounds with the Brixton Bomber but equally taxing on the old grey matter!

If you want to catch Gordon, he makes his appearance at 3.25pm on Channel 4.

Good luck Flash, knock ‘em dead.

Following on from the BBC’s Watchdog report last night about Wifi security, we’ve been receiving a number of calls from concerned customers worried that their wireless router is not secure.

Here’s some basic advice and we’ll show you where to get some guidance on how to protect your wireless network.

We take your security seriously and, provided you take simple steps to make sure protection is enabled, you shouldn’t be overly anxious about your home network.

Wifi-networks are protected using a passkey system, generally using WPA or the even more secure WPA2-PSK system. The Thomson gateway 585v7 we supply is configured to use WPA security by default. This will work with most Wifi devices and if you’ve got one of these your network should be protected.

If you want to make sure your home Wifi network is secure then we have a guide on securing your wireless on our support pages.

Don’t forget though. If you do change your SSID or your passkey, remember to make the same changes on your Wifi-enabled computer or laptop too, otherwise you won’t connect to your home network.

Public Hotspots

Last night’s watchdog report focused on Wifi hotspots. You’ll find these at airports, cafe etc and are designed for anyone to be able to connect to them, often free-of-charge. This is very different to your home network where you can restrict who has access to it by choosing to use WPA or WPA2 security and setting the passkey.

If you do use Wifi hotspots when you take your laptop out and about, make sure that the security software on your computer is up to date and you have an anti-virus and firewall installed.

If you have any important emails which contain confidential information, try and avoid sending these from unsecure public Wifi hotspots as this increase the risk of the contents being intercepted and read by hackers.

Remember:
When you’re not using the wireless signal on the router you should turn this off.

If you’ve got any questions about wireless security please pop over to our discussion forums.

Chris