This was originally posted on DSLReports - http://www.dslreports.com/forum/teksavvy

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Hey gang,

I'd like to provide everybody with a general update.

The obvious large problem that's visible to everybody is the wait times.

I've posted some of this a couple of weeks ago but I think it's important to highlight again. So 4 weeks ago a group of 20 hires started training, they train for a week then they have a week where they follow along with other existing staff. They started on their own on the phones two weeks ago. We generally start new hires on Mondays. Now, on that same Monday where those hit the phones a new group of 20 started their training and now those started on their own yesterday. Yesterday, an other two groups of 20, so 40 started their training and they will be hitting the phones the Monday after Next where another group of 40 will start their training. So on and so forth...

Now, the thing that was unknown since I posted last was that the School rush hit much harder then anticipated. We had a huge rush of signups these past two weeks, even after the first group of additional staff started, it's a good thing those started when they did or else it would have been much worse.

As soon as we noticed that large influx we called a meeting and we doubled up our plans to hire 40 instead of 20. If we could have done 60, we would have.

This week we are still seeing the after effects of those signups, the call volume is still very high, higher then normal. Yesterday was our largest call volume day for example only surpassed by the week that UBB hit earlier this year.

I also mentioned last time that we have a large re-org in the works where a number of changes will happen. This will begin next Monday. The re-org is primarily meant to address management issues such as communication between various groups, augment the number of team leads per number of bodies and also restructure phone operations distinctly from order fulfillment operations. The ultimate end goal is to better manage customer expectations and this new structure should allow us to better provide for great customer support, from that point on we can really focus on exactly what those details are. Right now it's all setup for the size we were at many months ago, it's just doesn't work anymore.

On the network side of things, the 3rd 10gig link to Rogers went live last night, I believe Gabe will be updating on that front soon. They are now trying to figure out what points of interconnect to move to it to augment the network. So to say that a bit differently, the three 10gig links are the ports entering TekSavvy's network and over those links Rogers maps or sends traffic from various POI's on their network.. so many POI end points aggregate to the 10gig links on our network. All we see on our side is 3 physical fibre end points.. everything else happens on Rogers end. Once we receive the data we then have our network that's connected to various on ramps on to the internet and various other strategic points like Torix for example... I'm explaining some of these things a bit more in detail then I normally would, if it's too much please let me know..

Besides the over all changes going on we are looking into exactly what happens at the micro level to see if we can improve anything. I know for example we have identified that we can really beef up our notification systems as well as our order state management. Right now our systems do not know how long each order has been in what state so this makes it very difficult to know when things may be going wrong. In the past it was always possible to manage these things by various smaller sub systems that either tracked the vendor status or relied on us not falling behind of various lists of work or simply having the customer call back if things weren't working properly. So now we're looking into changing these things so that we are tracking what the customer is experiencing so that we can better manage customer expectations. In a nutshell, our systems need to be much more intelligent.

Our dev team is doing a great job but we're still looking to a few developers for those who may be interested plz PM me. I think some of these may be posted on LinkedIn also, not sure anymore.

I'm mentioning these things now as opposed to when we actually have something delivered simply because I'm trying to show everything we have going on but the reality is that these things take time to happen and in particular to do right. The next nearest deliverable outside of small stuff being delivered regularly is probably 4-6 weeks away and will likely be the DSL order forms. There are constant changes going on and I hate to put timelines on these things since especially when we have weeks like the last two, where we really re-assess priorities things can change quickly. We have a person who is full time gathering requirements for example and it's difficult to get it right each time.

Outside of these issues the other two major issues are space and a new phone system. These two are the highest priorities right now and are causing many problems each time we add more bodies. These are big decisions that we can't just make lightly either so as soon as things are locked in I'll let everybody know what's going on. The net effect right now though is that internal communications are being hampered since we are having to put smaller groups in many small areas and adding more staff is more then just finding the bodies.. we nearly have a full time construction crew working for us at this point since there's no usable space. There's lots of warehouse space that we keep converting over in small chunks. To give an idea of what we're struggling with I'll try to go take some pictures of each location we currently have to patch together just to fit everybody in. In Chatham, at 330 Richmond we have the main area where my office is, that's where the bulk of the seats are, then we have two smaller areas on the first floor. We then have the kitchen area where there's another smaller room where we have some people now sitting. Off the kitchen down on the ground floor we have our NOC as well as some of our developers, some of our order fulfillment team is there also and now a portion of the business development team.. marketing and gov affairs/regulatory. Past those areas there are a couple more rooms where we currently have shipping and a new training area I believe. Shipping will be moved shortly so we can use that space to add more bodies and shipping can easily be fed from a fixed wireless feed since they aren't on the phones.. so they will be moved to another location. Past these spaces we have two more spaces down the street that has traditionally been used for training but will now be used to have more staff seated. In Sudbury, we've been cutting 6 foot desks down to 4 footers and maxing out that space also so we can add as many bodies there as we can.

What's needed is a much larger facility and that's what we're working on at this point. We had no idea going back 6 months that there would be this much growth. 12 months ago we were roughly 70 staff, now we're 270 including the 40 that just started yesterday and with the next batch we'll be busting the 300 mark.

I'm quickly realizing that this is becoming a wall of text. It's very frustrating to see some of the poor support posts going on, it's certainly not for trying to manage it all and many of the plans currently unfolding will go a long way to addressing the bulk of these issues. I'm 100% in agreement that things are not where they need to be but the notion that somehow we don't care and are basically sitting on our thumbs is flatly false. It's quite the reverse in fact.. we're throwing everything and the kitchen sink at this. It's a moving target is the main problem and to the extent we predict properly then everything will go well. At this point, I'm basically saying that we need to always have more then we need.. the problem is that we needed something like 100 additional staff on the phones 2 weeks ago... we now have roughly 60 of those in.. 20 are on the phones.. there are various reasons why we fell behind.. space is the primary one.

In summary.. for those who missed my previous posts, this new thread should give a nice easy place to reference what's going on. I'd also like to stress that help is on the way and that I'm determined to make all of these problems temporary and to properly fix them going forward.

Regards,

Marc - CEO/TekSavvy