End Of Week - 28th August

[#1]

Hey Everyone! It's Friday, and one of those ultra special Fridays before a bank holiday. I'm hoping that the weather will sort itself out so I can go and climb Three Pebble Slab again, or something similar. What are you lot up to this bank holiday? Let us know in the comments! Kicking the updates off is Lee who has joined the CSC Faults Team for a couple of weeks.

Hello, this is Lee from Faults for your End of Week posting. I've been seconded on the Faults team now for the last month, and it's been very interesting stuff. It's all very different to working on Technical Support, and you get to understand 2nd line processes a lot more thoroughly, and draw a good deal of satisfaction from fixing customers line faults. In order to keep us sane, we deal with all different kinds of faults and rotate workflow around the team. We have been very busy of late with lots of faults to fix. As to what we've been doing, it can prove boring, so I might throw in some random (some true, some not so true) facts that I've picked up over the last weeks about my colleagues. I've been dealing with oldest faults, along with Brad and Rich, some of which require lengthy escalations with our suppliers, which can prove stressful! Brad's also stressed because I beat him on penalties in the Pro Evo tournament a few days back. My fellow secondees, Kevin and Alex, have been doing nothing today, as Kevin's had a day off today (but he has come in for a gym induction, because he's lost his six pack recently, and is aiming to apply for Sheffield Man of the Year in 2010), and Alex is currently at Leeds festival enjoying the music (and Tim Minchin, who he loves). Tom's been dealing with Authentication faults today, and also claims he is "fantastic" at Guitar Hero. Al's been all over speed faults today, and he very kindly fetched me a bacon buttie this morning (so he's the best agent on the team as a result). Tony (or The Bone, as he's affectionately known) has been dealing with Home Phone problems and faults. He's also sharing my surprise that both our teams got through the next round of the Carling Cup (he supports Barnsley, and I Bolton Wanderers - and yes, I'm calling for Megson's head too). Adheel has been dealing with newly raised CSC Faults, and can't contain his excitement about the new Batman game. Keith's been running the team today, as our great leader is off for a hard earned break. That's it from me, enjoy your weekend (I certainly will, I'll be here fixing faults!)

It's all gone a little jackanory in the Comms Team. I can just imagine James sat in the big chair!

I'd like to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a little man with a shiny head called Bob. Bob often comes to work at Plusnet to talk to customers about things that are happening on the network and posting in forums to help fix some silly problems. But not this week. This week Bob went to a field to listen to some music and only came back on Wednesday. Bob was very angry because the people at BT have made his super-duper-very-fast Internet connection disconnect lots of times. This brings us conveniently onto James, who has been trying to fix Bob's dropping connection (along with mocking Bob on his ticket). James, keen to out-do Bob has come to work every day this week and has also been playing in the customer forums along with other exciting bits and pieces (these are normally called complaints). He's looking forward to the weekend, because it's the way all weekends should be, three days long. We also have our big sister, Mand, who is running away from her Plusnet home next week. Mand likes looking at development change controls and fixing home phone problems. She doesn't like meetings though, because she has so many of them. Our little brothers Chris, Matt and Andy aren't here today. Andy has disappeared for a week, Matt is trying to make his best friend call herself Mrs. Matt and Chris has gone to drink copious amounts of beer in a friend's garden. Then there's Peter. Peter is a bit like the Daddy of Family Comms. He's been telling us what to do and goes to even more meetings than sister Mand. He's getting excited about working with our friends in Family Business Improvement about making some things work better for the CSC. Then we went to the pub and lived happily ever after. THE END.

Phil provides an update from the Web Dev Team

A quick round up from the web dev team: JD has spent the week cultivating a beard for an upcoming stag do event so is starting to look quite grizzly. He has also been attempting to consume soft drinks in industrial volumes. Gary has been pushing a nautical theme with his dress sense this week, whilst also single handedly optimising the css on the Plusnet home page from 8 million megabytes to about 50k. Awesome stuff. Jonny has been looking at new interfaces for our signup process and generally running the team with his usual panache and charisma. Nick has been battling problems and support page issues in his customary efficient style. Meanwhile, having spent half the week on holiday I have been putting together timescales for upcoming work and generally championing the cause of Javascript among the heathen masses.

Next up, Business Improvement.

Here's the Business Improvement team - first, BI Manager, Ali McG: A very interesting week for me this week, putting into practise some of the things I learned on a management course last Friday. It's a year long course called the 'Management Development and Leadership Programme'. Bit of a mouthful but the name sums up what it's all about, with Plusnet investing in people to make sure they've got the right skills and to assist in succession planning. I've seen my first set of changes go live this week in my B.I. role - an update to the Plusnet and Madasafish phone system to allow customers moving home to pick a specific option for that. Previously, if you'd been moving and wanted to take Plusnet with you (which we'd always encourage 🙂 ) then you'd have maybe chosen 'customer service' or made a bit of a guess. Now it's clear! I had a call today with a division within BT that offers software solutions for phone systems (e.g. adding little bits of automation onto the phone system, so that customers who want to do things themselves, can do. It's also handy if the wait time is too long for you). This is some research into our phone system which is an ongoing project for me over the next few weeks. I've also had some meetings to do with billing and customer service improvements, so that we can pick out the areas causing most pain and go for some quick wins. Anyway - it's Manchester Pride this weekend, so the city is going to be packed to the rafters with party people - let the fun begin! Now over to Luke for a quick update... Well after a truly life-changing year (got married and became a dad), my wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Thought I would share that with you all Work wise, catching up on emails on my return, attending the 21CN project kick-off meeting (not where everyone fights!), a few calls with our suppliers and our BT Openreach Service Review. Performance on this (this is specifically our Home Phone service) looks to be really good. This is especially a key area as we look to move to WLR3 in the very near future - I am sure a blog will come on that! Have a great Bank Holiday weekend. I might have a round of golf, along with celebrating my friend's birthday - he is having a bbq. It will rain then. (Ali: what a pessimist!!)

and the final update, Laura from the HR Team

Hello all, Friday has come round quickly this week! And it’s a bank holiday! Jen has gone off to Leeds festival today so let’s all keep our fingers crossed for sunshine! She has been keeping busy with starter and change admin, trying to get on top of all her emails (I think her inbox is beginning to creak) and also sorting through the photos from the MDLP…congrats to the graduates and good luck to the new cohort! Gem has been mainly involved in new starter induction and recruitment. She has also been discussing the disciplinary procedure with line managers. Barbs is of course on holiday. As for me, I have been sorting out the CEO awards event and other transport and bookings. I have also been helping with advertising internal vacancies and new starters admin work.

In case you were wondering, the CEO awards is where we take a small number of Plusnet staff who we feel we've done a fabulous job over the last year down to London for a slap up meal in the BT tower and a night on the town! Ok, this is me signing off. Have a great weekend!