Kuma Rajendran provided assistance to Qantas and Telstra during an electrical storm that caused outages to Qantas' voice communication networks. Although on personal leave, Kuma willingly worked through the night to help coordinate a resolution. His expertise helped guide Telstra and the vendor NEC to implement workarounds and ultimately fix the problems. Kuma's efforts were recognized by Richard Clarke of Telstra and he received a reward from the Qantas team for his initiative and assistance during the outage.

1. PEOPLE CONNECTIONS
Care Connections Issue 4 - April 4, 2008
(Removed picture from the article for privacy reasons)
The day Kuma made planes fly
The severe electrical storm that hit Sydney mid evening on Tuesday, March 25, had a direct impact
on the voice communications network utilised by Qantas at its Mascot (Sydney) campus sites. In
particular, the heavily used Qantas IVR system went off air causing direct business impact to
Qantas staff who utilise it to be routed to a range of support services within Qantas itself and to
suppliers such as Qantas and Telstra. In addition, the Qantas Integrated Operations Centre (IOC)
experienced intermittent call drop outs and problems with network out dialling services. The IOC is
a vital 24x7 operations unit in Qantas that accepts and manages calls pertaining to anything relating
to aircraft - from load control issues, to freight, to catering, to engineering.
The issues were classified as Severity 1 with the Major Incident Management (MIM) team
swinging into operation mode. Due to contactability issues, leave and illness with other staff, Kuma
Rajendran was engaged on behalf of the Customer Care Managed Voice Service Desk team.
Although on personal leave, Kuma willingly worked with the MIM team and stakeholders
throughout the wee hours of March 26 - from midnight through to 8 am. Kuma's presence on the
technical and stakeholder bridges brought the contractual, operational and customer environmental
knowledge and insight to guide all Telstra parties, and worked in very closely with the NEC vendor
partner, to instigate workarounds and ultimately a resolution to the problems being experienced.
Kuma's contribution was excellent and short circuited the steps to a final resolution - a win for a
very concerned customer and a win for Telstra. His efforts have been duly recognised by Richard
Clarke, Director of the Telstra Qantas Team. In recognising Kuma's effort, Richard said, "Thank
you for your great work in assisting to rectify the situation with the lightening strike impact on the
IOC voice services in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I understand that you were on leave
but still came in to all the Stakeholder Bridges and provided much need information in the Voice
space." For his initiative and effort, Kuma received 250 Reward.Points from the Qantas team.
With staff like Kuma, demonstrating our cultural values of Customer.First, Done.Now,
Anything.Possible and We Get It.Together, our potential to meet customer expectation is certainly
very high!