The Transition from CSC to Comms

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I’ve been working here for about two and a half years now, and enjoyed it more than any other job I’ve ever had. You can feel a bit of pressure as far as targets go and in the CSC I’ve sometimes been required to do 103 issues (one call, or one ticket response) per shift, although this is constantly under review and is dependent on the volume and nature of the queries that are coming through to the CSC. After a few months in the CSC an opportunity in the Broadband Operations Team (BOT) became available, and I leapt at the chance. At the time BOT work was divided in to 2 flavours: provisioning and logged faults and I was lucky enough to get a post working the latter. I did this work for a year and a half before moving back to the CSC and on to other workflows as well as logged faults – calls, retentions, CSC faults (the initial testing and raising of the fault itself) etc. This experience has stood me in good stead for a position on the Comms team, as there are frequent enquiries regarding faults in most, if not all of the forums we frequent. There is also the added bonus that on the Comms team part of the remit is to help with improvements to our service and a knowledge of such a process is certainly a help in situations like this, for example the next stage of the faults wizard. Since gaining this position my perspective has changed a great deal. When you’re in the CSC the only evidence of other departments that can be seen comes via the issues that customers are calling about and the communication from the Comms team. As such it can sometimes be frustrating when an open development problem that’s causing you grief is taking a long time to fix or you’re being shouted at by a customer due to a recent service outage. Of course we appreciate the new tools and services that get rolled out to make our lives easier, but sometimes it can be easy to get frustrated with the areas of the business you’re not regularly involved with. On Comms, I have been able to see things from the other side – liaising with other departments is an essential part of the role. This has led to a switch whereby I can see issues with some of things done by the CSC, and how they could possibly be done differently to help with other departments and the things that they do. There’s also a very different work culture on the Comms team. Unlike the CSC, where targets are a part of your job and regular performance reviews are undertaken, the onus is very much on yourself to ensure that you are doing the work that it is your responsibility to complete. Fortunately I actively enjoy working for PlusNet and my interest in the IT industry means that I look forward to coming in to work, even if I do have to step back and take a breath sometimes rather than firing off some of the replies I’d really, REALLY like to post in response to some of the more (ahem) vocal of forum goers 😛 – but then professionalism also needs to go hand in hand with a job such as this where public exposure is de rigueur. It’s an ongoing adventure, and one that will certainly deserve an update in the near future, but for now I’m going to sign off. Let me know what you think, please. I’d be very grateful. Matt Taylor