A long, long time ago (in a building not so very far away) I used to compile ‘end of day’ reports from around the business and post them to our customer service Usenet newsgroups. Someone mentioned to me the other day how similar they were to a blog and then someone else asked.. “Why don’t you still post an end of day?” I couldn’t answer them. So we’ll try it out, see how we go and commit to keep posting for as long as you’re reading.. how’s that?
Such updates can’t cover everything (they’re not meant to) but I hope that in reading them you gain some insight into what each department here does, and what some of the issues we face look like from our side of the web browser
So.. today's update from around the business. I know it’s a bit dry today but I’ll do my best to get some interesting stuff out as we get the EOD ball rolling.
And we'll move this posting to live on the front of the Community site once we're up and running too.
Customer Support Centre:
These figures provide approximate numbers from an analyst's perspective, of the key reasons for contacting us today.
- Authentication & Faults 30%
- Router setup from new 20%
- Email setup from new 5%
- Sales 45%
Networks:
Metronet customers have been affected over the weekend with intermittent 'timeouts' when collecting email. These problems are only evident when using the server address 'mail.metronet.co.uk' for the sending and receiving of email. Affected customers can circumvent the problem by using the following settings in their software:
Incoming (POP3) pop.metronet.co.uk
Outgoing (SMTP) smtp.metronet.co.uk
Our DNS servers are being replaced to ensure resilience; we expect this work to be completed on Wednesday.
More information.
An end of an era as our old Usenet (newsgroups) servers are turned off today, with the server addresses (eg. news.plus.net) being directed to our news suppliers (Supernews) directly.
Update on Usenet.
Development:
The dept is working on many projects currently. We hope to share these with you in future daily EOD updates.
We've recently published our
Data Retention Policy. Work for several associated database changes is ongoing.
Website changes to be announced shortly are being tested this week. We hope to be able to bring more news on this for you tomorrow.
Website:
Preparation and testing is currently underway for a website change project to be announced very shortly.
Information presented to new customers immediately after they sign up is known to be ineffective. We are working to improve this by improving the post-signup information screen and the automated confirmation emails.
An improved 'My Account' section is in the first stages of development. Ultimately we aim to update the 'Member Centre', making self-service easier on the website.
Product & Marketing:
We've been working on some ongoing issues with hardware stock availability today and hopefully have got a process that will allow us to be more proactive with stock levels at the warehouse.
Another recent addition to the team, Darren (who's our graduate placement) had a good day, for the first time running a load of our reporting processes solo. Especially on a Monday, our team presents a lot of detailed data each week for analysis by the rest of the business.
We've also had a bit of a look at Freedom to Surf's new gaming product (to decide if it will change anything major in the market). Our initial take is that we’re not convinced it offers very much special or different for gamers. That said, there is no doubt among us that gamers are both a demanding yet worthwhile market to cater for and we'll be watching how things develop.
