Call Center

Tired

by

The week is finally over. It has been a good week, but the weekend is here. I am yet again tired after a long work week. You may say I had off monday, but the week was still long and full of stressful work. Fun, stressful work yes. Stressful none the less.

I got almost no sleep last night. Got home late and then didn’t sleep very well. I ended up taking 2 Butabital’s (fureset’s) before lunch. It helped but I had waking up with migranes. Now this was 3 in 2 months. Not good. I was tired all day, but I still ended up going out for drinks after work. I needed it. I had a personel issue regarding a rep. I cannot go into details, but never yell at someone. Doing that is bad. I was the one recieving the yelling. It was very stressful. The situation was taken care of, but people have to chill out. That put a damper on an otherwise nice day.

Searvers, Software, And Stuff

by

Every day it seems like we need another server to do this or that. I have request for 3 different things right now that I can think of that all will require new server gear. Then when I go ask for the money for the stuff I get the traditional “what do you need that for?” speech from Gus. Or the “you want to spend how much money?” speech. I know he is kidding most of the time but it highlights the tight rope I walk between what we need and not spending too much money.

With that said I need to begin testing an Exchange 2003 server within our Information Systems department. We are attempting to see how difficult it would be to use and administer an exchange server. I think it will be good to use in a small workgroup environment like the IS department, but not for a full company deployment. We will see.

Along with evaluating mail packages I want to find a good LDAP product that will allow me to share 1 address book between two facilities and remote users. We don’t all connect to the same domain, and not everyone is able to access inside servers all the time. I would like our mail system to provide LDAP, but our current provider does not offer it. Looking at alternatives now.

This week has been good because I have been looking at new technologies and software to enhance our infrastructure. Microsoft Operations Manager looks great and we may do a full scale deployment of it. We are locking down users desktops more effectively. I am in the process of deploying a log file analyzing software to digest our web server logs more effectively. The remote KVM system was also killer. Tying everything together into one systems management system will be the tricky part.

We Have A Call Center, Well Sort Of!

by

Wednesday we finally officially started taking calls at my companies new call center. I was on a conference call with AT&T while they made the first test call. It was exciting, but melodramatic. After a few small issues the Customer Service Rep’s (we call them Part-solver’s) were taking calls. Not many calls mind you. We wanted to make sure the system worked before we send lots of traffic to it. We maybe got 100 or so real calls. Now that the system is up and running, it is time to begin hiring lots of people to take calls. It will take months to get the new center fully staffed. For now I am focusing on cleaning up things, virtually and physically. Joe doesn’t yet have a desk in his office so our stuff is sprawled all over 8 call center desks. I still have lots of work to do, but it is nice to have started taking calls.

I was able to leave to go home with Dan Wednesday evening. It was nice to be home. I rode back with him and 3 Rep’s who he brought from NYC. They were there so the new hires could see how things should go.

The Last Big Kingston Trip, Hopefully!

by

I am off to Kingston NY again for a few days. This week we officially activate this office. Tuesday we turn on the phone system and begin taking calls. I am going up today so I can do any last minute changes. Keith got allot done for me last week, but I need to finish up any loose ends. Joe is feeling better and will also get make sure we are good to go. I am scheduling myself to be “upstate” as we NYC people call it for 3 days, but if all goes well I may be back tuesday night.

Hopefully once the call center starts taking calls I can limit my trips to one and two day stints up there. that way I can catch up on issues in NYC.

Home At Last

by

I finally made it home. I was in Kingston from Sunday to Wednesday night. I ran out of clean clothes and I was really low on the med’s so I came home. Keith is up there today (thursday) and friday. I go back next week again. I actually have 2 days in the office this week. It is weird. I haven’t worked a full day at the office since Monday the 11th. It is the 21 now. Wow.

I got a ride home from Kingston from one of our Integrators from Expanets. I know I used to hate that company but the tech guys we are working with are all awesome. Chad our Cisco expert fixed up all our switches and call manager. I learned allot of stuff from him, but would have liked to learn allot more.

Keith is working on the desktop security profile for Kingston while he is up there. I already did 99% of the desktop ghost image for the computers we are starting with. I figured out the problem with Ghost 7.5 and our Compaq (HP) Evo 510’s. I was able to modify the disk we use with the with our older Evo 310’s.

I also got the White (voice) patch panel done Wednesday. It looks good, or as good as we can get it with the time we have. Joe will do the blue cables next.

The New Office Is Open, Well Sort Of

by

The new office I have been working on for months is finally open. Well it is open for training at least. The first group of call center rep’s started today. We still don’t have all the phones working, the patch panel is not done, and I still don’t have a ghost image or security profiles for the users. On the other hand we had enough computers and people were able to train. In the end things are not perfect, but they are working. As we speak our tape system we took out of our NYC office is restoring applications that I could not move to the new network via my laptop.

Tomorrow I have our intergrator return to mount and finish testing on my call center software and my phone system. Things are working now, but the phone system is not mounted yet. Allmost all my data gear is mounted, and looks great. The only thing left is the patch panel. The rest of the work to be done is all virtual. Setting up users and security. I am in Kingston till tuesday evening then I am back to NYC. I need to spend some time in NYC doing other work besides this move. The move preocupies almost all my time recently. I need to spend more time in kingston, but just can’t be away. That is how I feel right now, that tons of things are getting overlooked because I am not in NYC. I will send Keith up on thursday and have him spend 2 days getting kingston in order while I clean up issues in NYC. Then next monday I am back to Kingston for our first queue move. This is when we really put the new system into production.

Today is looking like it was a record day for my company. We maxed out our 3 voice T-1’s with calls durring peak hours. We also look like we are going to make a sales record for today. This is most likely due to the black out, but it still is a record day. The new office doesn’t come fast enough.

Wow, Crazy Stress Filled Week

by

I have been really busy, and out of town most of this week. This will be quick since I am off to bed. I was in Kingston NY working on getting our new office ready Tuesday – Thursday. Things are coming together but still having some issues. The voice T-1’s all work. But the phone system needs some new hardware. My companies current phone system had problems tuesday night causing problems for hours. Dam windows NT 4.0. More issues on Wednesday, but not as bad. Now I have issues with requests for a redesign of how our call center is going to operate. I need to map out the changes tomorrow. I am so stressing, and tired right now. I hope I can get some sleep. Friday will be interesting. it always is when you are out for a few days. I have racked up allot of hours on the mobile phone this week.

The good news is the Cisco Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone system we put in actually works. Sounds great and everything. We are just having some issues with getting the wrong type of routers. All sorts of capacity issues now. We are having our integrator fix the problem.

More tomorrow, I hope.

Construction And The Kingston Project!

by

I took some construction photos of our new office. The place is really shaping up. I will be up there on Tuesday turning on our Internet T-1’s and testing our first voice T-1. I should have some nice pictures then. The carpet should be done by then.

Everyone is stressing about our new huge project, but they are not talking about Kingston. Our business folks and our development team are freaking out over another project that is taking up all of there time. It is huge, and can be a massive success if we finish it on time and as advertised. I am freaking out because I have things to deliver for this other project, and I have to complete everything for Kingston. I am starting to worry if I will finish everything in time.

Our racks are not ordered yet because until tuesday I have no place to put them. I need power strips for the dam telecom room, but I cannot use them until the electrical is done. They are special plugs that you cannot just go out and buy at the hardware store. I have our initial batch of 25 computers waiting to ship. I got 3 to play with, and Joe is working on building a standard for them.

I have 1 of the 2 main Domain Controllers for the network built, but no security setup yet. I built a test domain so I can see if what I want to do will work without messing up my new production system.

I just ordered our tape drive unit. that should arrive this week. I then have to replace it with my current office’s system and setup the old one for kingston.

I haven’t even bought the hardware or software for anti virus and ghosting yet. Plus I need to setup network monitoring on a network that doesn’t even exist yet.

On top of that, Keith has to get me working Pix firewall’s by August 4th. I am also waiting for a revised network configuration for our Data Center that has to go out no later than the 7th of next month. Once that is done daniel can finish the new FTP server system we are deploying. I just ordered the hardware for that.

And if all that isn’t enough I have to make more room in the call center for more rep’s since we will need them before kingston is online. There is probably more that I am not even remembering right now.

Oh and don’t forget the Verizon strike scheduled for next Saturday.

Work as Usual

by

Monday was work as usual. We had our new Kingston Help-desk guy start. Gave him the really brief overview of stuff we do. After lunch he sat in on a training class for Call Center people. I bet he wasn’t happy about that.

We got our 2 file servers for kingston. They are nice. I am building Windows 2003 Server on them right now. Not 100% sure if we will use 2003 though.

We are planning a huge system upgrade at our data center that I mentioned last week. We hashed out issues still outstanding regarding that move. So far we have no show stopper issues. I gave it a go and await getting final approval for the work to proceed. We will meet again tomorrow to make sure no new issues creep up.

Keith is not happy because he thinks we gave away too much in the design changes to our development team. Or rather to accommodate issues they had. I think this is Phase 1 in a multi stage project. Once we complete this, we work for Phase 2 changes that may require reworking some site code. The work we are going to deploy represents a major step for us though. Sorry I cannot go into too much detail, but certain aspects of work are better left off the open internet!

Staff meeting day

by

Another mid week staff meeting day. The mornings are always shot doing this stuff, but it is needed. I have allot to bring up today. We (keith) is about done with the new switch configuration for our data center. We need to schedule a deployment of that. It will be a big deal since so many network paramiters are changing.

I also have a conference call with our VOIP intergrator regarding our project. I think we are about ready to set an install date. Our CEO wants us able to test calls on Augist 15. I am not sure if that will happen, but the big bossman wants us to try, so we try!