Interesting project at work

Hi lads

we have a nice project at work these days so I thought I write about it a little bit considering that I didn’t write too much about my work so far.
We had (and still have) the task to set up an internet cafe from scratch for a customer. That was quite interesting because none of us (including Peter) has done something like that before. So we spend a lot of time with research at first. We found a very good software and we started to get used to it. After a test run on a few very old machines we went to Techmatic, the enterprise of Joe (a partner of Peters) to set up the machines we intended to sell the customer. We spent quite some time putting them together with all the same hardware and software. After that we installed the internet cafe software and tested and tested and tested until we finally worked everything out.
At the end of last week we did a little presentation for Joe to give him an overview over the software and the general things we’ve done so far. He was quite pleased.
The next steps will be to set up the machines in the actual cafe with all the hardware and wiring necessary.
As I already said that was (and still is) a very interesting task.
Actually that is one of the best things at my work here. There is barely one day like the other. 🙂

So long
Fabian

My internship at Webroot

What the hell do you do instead of travelling around the country and drinking in the pub?

 

That is not everything we do here

That must be one of your questions when you read our blog.
But as all the other guys I am also working here. And so I want you to read about one day in my worklife abroad.

Introduction
As said before my company is called Webroot International Limited and it is a provider for an Antivirus-, Firewall and Cleaningsoftware. It is working internationally and has its headquarter in Broomfield, USA. There are branches of it in Colorado, Australia, Japan and Dublin of course. Dublin is the city where the company was founded about 14 years ago. It is a serious opponent of Norton. There is currently no branch in Germany, Netherlands, France and Turkey because all the other providers are stronger.
But soon there will be a support for those countries to spread it a little more in Europe.

Our logo at the cantine

I work there in the Contact Center. That means I support customers from all over the world, especially from the UK in the morning and from the US in the afternoon. It is up to me to answer tickets and to answer calls.
My topics are…

– renewing licenses
– installation help
– precise uninstall and install support to get rid of of old software
– troubleshooting about licenses and software
– troubleshooting about infections and malware
– setup and general help
– analyse virusscan protocolls
– purchase products for customers

What happened the last weeks?
In my first week I started on tuesday. At the first two days I was in a product training. Thats how I met John. He is the trainer and one of the escalation engineers in the Dublin departement. They prepared for me my own workstation with all accounts necessary to have access to every portal that I need for work. John showed me all the programs and functions of my laptop. Then he made a presentation of all the products, their prices and the capabilities and configuration in the software. We had this training in one of the conference rooms. There is also another girl from around Dublin who comes from another department to learn the work at Webroot. But she does not work in the technical customer support, but in the threat anaylst team.
On thursday and friday I was shadowing the agents to get to know the programs and the work itself better. Shadowing means that I am plugged into the telephone and can watch the screen. So I can experience exactly what the agent sees and hears. It was also great to get used to the English speaking customers.
In the following week I started on monday and tuesday to drive the computer while the agent was calling to get used to the systems when I use them myself.
And finally wednesday I was thrown in at the deep end and my team manager asked me to do the call on my own with the help of my trainer. I wasn’t too nervous because I have done the job before in German and I am used to talk to English speaking customers in general. But it is a new topic and so it was challenging of course.
Since friday last week I am working completely on my own and all skills are applied for me. And it works fine.

A day at work

Our office buildings. I am in the highest tower in the middle.

9.25 am
I arrive at the building at George’s Quay Plaza at the Dublin city centre.
I am scanning my security badge at the front door to get behind the security doors.
I enter the lift and go up to the sixth floor.

9.30 am
Arrival in the office, talk to the team, getting coffee, opening my drawer, set my computer on the docking station, starting it and all the programs including logon.

9.45 am
Starting the telephone software to get calls “auto-in”. In the morning there is usually not too much going on at the hotline. So I am mostly working on tickets and there are calls like every 10 minutes. Because of the time difference between the USA and Ireland there are no calls from the US until 2 pm. So we are only receiving calls from the UK.

One of our workplaces with multi-screening

12.30 pm
Around 12 and 1 pm I have lunch for an hour. We have to talk to each other, so that there are not too less agents on the line. For lunch I usually walk into the city to enjoy the weather, go shopping, see sights or sit down at a bench on the promenade of the river liffey.

At the promenade on lunch time

2.00 pm
At 2 pm the US awakes and the people from there are calling us. From this point of time we are really busy, because we get US calls every second and there are also tickets waiting to get answered.

5.30 pm
If the last issue is resolved at this time I can call it a day. Otherwise I have to finish the case and can go afterwards.

view from our floor

Thats it. If you have any questions, let me know.

Greetz, Manuel

work experience abroad

Hi everybody

i’ve received recent complaints that I’m not writing enough about my work here. I checked my posts and it’s true 🙂 So here it is:

I work at computerdoctor. The main business is to repair laptops and desktops. They also provide stuff like software installation, virus removal, etc. There are only a few employees but there are all very nice and the atmosphere at computerdoctor is pretty much like in a big family. The boss, Brian, is a bit excentric but apart from that nice and funny. He insists for instance that we all wear ties at work which is a bit annoying because we don’t have any contact with customers and while taking laptops apart it can be quite annoying and we always feel overdressed. The manager, and also our mentor there, is Peter. He is also very nice. He’s actually from Germany which makes things sometimes a bit easier but on the other hand we don’t talk that much English. But after the first week we’re talking less German and more English, so that problem solved itself.
So what have we done so far? We started off with taking laptops apart and back together. Then some basic troubleshooting and repair jobs. We also repair displays, PS3’s, … Last week we started to learn soldering, which is a bit tricky because you need a steady hand to solder cables or motherboards.
In the next few weeks the store moves to another location. I’m really looking forward to this because Peter said he wants to set up a small network there. So it’s not going to be boring over the next weeks.

That’s it for now.
Fabian

the first two days

Hi everybody

and just like that its Tuesday and we are in the middle of Dublin.
Dublin is a beautiful city. the parts we’ve seen so far are very nice. A little crowded maybe but definitely a city worth visiting.
The flight was perfect, right on time and without turbulances. At the airport we said goodbye to the group heading off to belfast. We were picked up by Damian who drove us through the city to our appartments. He gave us a little overview about the main attractions in Dublin.
The appartments are very nice. Everything was just as promissed. well not quite. We don’t have a dryer and the internet connection is very bad. but the rest is just wonderful. Right in front of the appartment is a LUAS station which takes us to the city centre in like 10 minutes.
on monday we didn’t have to go to work. We had a meeting with Margaret from Internsplus. Thats the company organising everything for us in Dublin. We had a little chat and after that she showed us a little around our new neighbourhood and we went to see the Guiness store house which is quite nice and we had our first Guiness up in the Gravity Bar with a stunning view over Dublin. Unfortunatly I didn’t expect that so I didn’t had my camera with me. But Manuel took some nice pictures. Maybe he will upload some later 🙂
After the meeting with Margeret we made an extensive shoppingtour through Lidl. Like in Germany it is the cheapest way to survive.
Back home we ate a bit and than took off to the next pub to see the last game of Irelands green boys.
The people weren’t kidding when they said that a pint in a pub costs like 4 to 5 € but the crowd was great. I wonder how the reactions would have been if Ireland had scored or even won the game considering the cheers and applause when an italian attack was successfully defended.
We really didn’t wanted to be late on our first day on Tuesday so we went to bed pretty early.
That plan didn’t work out very well. At first our busdriver took a little spontanious break and in addition we had a little troube finding the place. So we made a great first impression 🙂
What we will do over teh next few weeks at Computerdoctor is troubleshooting computers. Mostly laptops. We started off with a little basic knowledge. Interesting hearing all the familiar components in english 🙂
Our boss seems really nice and I think we can learn a lot from him. So I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks.

Read you soon
Fabian