End of Week: September 25th
Hello readers! It's the end of another week here in overcast Sheffield, I'll get straight to the nitty gritty and pass you over to Lenny in South Africa...
Hi End of the Week….. mmmmm…..what’s that ? Just kidding, if anything it’s been wild. You must excuse me; I am still recovering from having had to be at the office on a Public Holiday. Yip, SA celebrated “Heritage Day” yesterday. Okay Okay, I should stop saying that...... a few years back some young aspiring dude, nah not me, decided to call it “National Braai Day”, unofficially off course. So dis pap en vleis alles rond en almal is baie gelukig. (ed: does anyone care to tell me what that means?) Nick came down to visit the team this week and to him it feels like he never left home. He must have had extra space in his luggage; the dude brought grey clouds and rain with. Durb’s has never been that cold, misty or rainy; we can’t even see the building next door, lol. No seriously, it’s always great to have Nick down, huge inspiration to the team. As for me, well it’s very comforting to play a round of golf with someone who losses just as many balls per hole. Leaving out the dreary weather and my surf board that’s accumulating spider webs, it has been quite a positive week for the TS. Sat results came through and by departmental breakdown we have seen quite rosy figures for the Techies. We achieved green rag on overall contact handling, and even better reviews on the agents dealing with each case. We also rolled out a Madasafish Cust Sat incentive at the beginning of the month. Basically each time a customer rates our service very good/ excellent, the agent responsible wins a little prize. Tech raked a total of 82% of all prizes to date. There are still a few grey areas, as it relates to feedback on DSL faults, but the positive spin off has geared up the team to persevere. We are all planning for exciting times to follow; new training programmes have been facilitated to upskill Tech in CSC Billing and Failed Billing. Tech is quite eager to pick up the ticket volumes, and spruce up the ET for a change. We have been expecting an increase in call volumes in August but haven’t seen a very noticeable spike. Probably a godsend, we have staff in training and can’t wait for them to hit the floor. Or perhaps the magic of our new routers could be doing the trick. The team has been collecting data to measure the impact on CSC. It may be a bit early to determine the actual effect, but we are all pretty hopeful. We are already receiving few calls on Snow Leopard, and the staff have updated their wish lists saying, “Please can we have a VD for Mac X.6?” The team did great this week, working to piece together positive KPMs, especially the internal shrinkages, and with the trainees about to go live, we are sure to get a better handle on the Longest Waits and a few more % for the JLP SLA. More good news this week, one of our own, Preeshan Reddy was recently appointed as the Customer Service Manager. We are all really proud of Preeshan and his achievement and wish him well in his new role. Carl Baker, we are in your corner 120%, knock his lights out dude!! (ed: Carl's a manager here in Sheffield and he'll be taking part in the latest Prize Fighter Tournament on Sky Sports next week!) Well, that’s a wrap for the week then, looking forward to an equally exciting week to follow and more ICC champion’s trophy games. So until next time, like Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr, I’m out’a here !!
Wow, I need to catch my breath after that. I'll let Mand continue with the Comms update..
Comms Bob's been working on 'blah blah, something 'bout networks, blah blah'. He also spent some time in Usenet, and on some project work, along with handling the recent Frontpage decommissioning stuff. Matt's continued his beard growing, and decided that everyone should have a beard (erm, logistical problem there, for me at least :P). He also worked on some project work, some clean up for recent billing problems, and has been on call (which means he gets to leave early the lucky devil). Chris and I have been writing some training, and some content for an upcoming project (more on that in a few weeks). James was kind enough to send me his activities via our IM client, meaning I don't even have to talk to him (we're all about efficiency here) so here it is in all it's glory: (4:40:14 PM) James Bailey: help assistant (4:40:16 PM) James Bailey: forums (4:40:18 PM) James Bailey: pms (lots) (4:40:20 PM) James Bailey: twitter (4:40:23 PM) James Bailey: adsl2+ faults Best not to ask 'bout the pms I feel.Andy has been working on some updates to My Account which rolled live on Thursday, so you may have noticed that it's all pretty and pink now like the rest of the site. He also worked on some updates for our router setup guide. Have a good weekend, and we'll see you same place, same time next week. Mand
I've been promised an update from the Web Team, but it's not there yet... I'll give them a few more minutes.... . . . . Here we are! Off you go Gary!
This week the Web Development team have been embroiled in an undercover Mafia bust operation. Well, the operation that I was involved in was run by an individual named Jonathan "Donato the Bear" Defries, who at the time was the underboss of the Jonny "Cosimo Porkchop" Wing family, and it was a Wing family operation that had various members throughout the ground floor involved in taking the designs and codes and then turning them in to Wing and other individuals that were the upper echelon of the family, and they were running it. Now, how they operated from there, I cannot answer that. Sam "Blind Tony Bruno" Weaving, and myself; have been busy laying low on the secret project, Little Nicky "Trapdoor Valentino" Bower has been relating information on our undercover operations back to the guys at the agency via coded support section updates. A fellow agent, Phil "Shaky Carlo Gallo" Swaine has been undercover too long and is having trouble adjusting back to the straight life, he's been busy reviewing previous work and making general improvements for our partners. Meanwhile the Capo di tutti Capi, Jonny "Cosimo Porkchop" Wing, is nowhere to be found, he's fled the area in fear of being whacked for allowing his organisation to be infiltrated, some say he's ran off up a hill in the Peaks, capiche? Ciao. Gary "Marco Leatherchest" Rockett
Hmmm...I suppose thats better than referencing Days of Thunder! That's all we have for this week, see you next time!