End of Day: 1st May

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It's Thursday, and we're having a party tonight to celebrate winning the 9 USwitch awards earlier this year. However, that doesn't mean to say we've not been up to much in the business today... what with usage increases for the Broadband Your Way producta rolling out this morning and also our new Broadband Usage Mini Site. Adheel in the CSC with today's update:

Hello Peeps, A steady one in the CSC this Thursday, over 1,000 calls taken! The Top 5 for today are as follows: 1) Router Set-ups - As always, our new and exisiting customers calling in for advice on setting up thier routers and broadband connection, these queries ranging from IP addresses of random routers, or general information on router settings. A large number of older customers with equipment recently reset, forgetting to use the @realm, e.g @plusdsl.net, @force9 etc. 2) Email Configuration - Mostly people wanting to set-up mail clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Mac Mail or Entourage for the first time and wanting to confirm the settings required to do so. Many people have used the help and support guides online which are clear, but customers can come unstuck when using username+mailbox format for secondary mailboxes. 3) Fault Chasing - Customers calling in for a update on thier No Sync or Intermittent Synch broadband faults, or calling in to confirm alternative hardware has been tried or the other checks that we advise of. 4) New Faults - Again customers calling in with either No Sync or Intermittent broadband connections, and being advise of the full checks they can action to save time and try and resolve the fault as soon as possible, or faults being raised if all the checks have been actioned and the issue persists. 5) Product Refresh Queries - And finally a nice one for all the people who worked hard on rolling this out today, I've had 6 or 7 people call in today specifically querying the changes to BBYW Options 1,2,3 & Pro, and in most occasions was someone on a legacy PAYG, Premier or Plus account who think the new packages represent a much better deal. Package regrades should shoot up in the next few days, and the other people on the team noticed this also today, so a hugely postive note to end this top 5!

Indeed, very positive. We hope people appreciate the usage limit increases. Mand from Comms:

We'd like to apologise for the lack of regular EOD's from your Comms team over the last week or so. If absence makes the heart grow fonder you should be absolutely loving us by now though, right? Anyway, we'll make a more concerted effort from now on. Today has mostly been about our new product allowances, which seem to have gone down rather well with customers so far. Here's what we've spent the rest of the day doing. Chris: Anger at our survey system, Networks Change Controls, forums, and eating brownies. Bob: Email Acceptable Usage Policy, emailing customers who have a virus, forum activity, and making a rather nice cup of tea . Matt: Blogging, contacting high usage customers, forums and VOiP comms. James: Sales training, forum activity. Mand: Problems, Development Change Controls, WLR processes and escalations, and a bit of forum activity as it's Friday for me (w00t!).

Next up, we have James from the Web Dev team:

A round up from a crazy day in Web Dev........ Duffy - reviewing various tasks and performing some general content updates Andrew - problem fixes and updating video support matterial Projects Team (Chris, Wojtek, Grzegorz, Nick and Mark) - continuing on their adventure to conquer Brightview phase 2 bug fixes and templates Jonny - sorting out a new method of voting for Plusnetter of the month Pete - various Brightview phase 2 tasks including some phone calls I've been adding new bits and pieces to the customer generated support stuff and doing a task for marketing Rupert - working on PUGIT items relating to usage emails Colin - helping me with some rollout stuff - working on updates to the Community Site banners, Community Site database stuff, and looking at some PUGIT items And thats all folks. James

Marketing's update, passed on to me by Nick while discussing something else:

Two of the Marketing team are celebrating after helping their football team win a cup game last night, while the rest of the Marketing team have been doing various updates, Press Releases etc. related to last night's product update. There's also been some strategic planning for the forthcoming year.

A late enterant... Melanie from Development:

Today in dev we have mostly been eating cake. Helen organised a bake-off, where the many and varied talented PlusNet bakers brought in their wares and they were sold off slice by slice to raise money for St Luke's Hospice, as part of the Master Cutler's Challenge that PlusNet is taking part in. I for one have eaten far more slices of cake than is good for me, and now feel pretty sick. Ben L's girlfriend baked an amazing cake, which is being raffled off.... because we all love PlusNet so much we could eat it???? No - because we like cake - yeah, that's it... The whole cake is edible, including the screen Oh, and in between cake eating there's been a touch of software development taking place. More cake anyone?

The cake does look very impressive! Well, I'm off to finish up a couple of things then going home to get ready... Colin