Re: Best TAC Services from Equipment Vendors

[Sabri Berisha <sabri () cluecentral net>]

----- On Mar 6, 2024, at 10:49 PM, Saku Ytti saku () ytti fi wrote:

Hi,

> Support quality has always been very modest, unless you specifically
> pay to have access to named engineers. And this is not because quality
> of the engineers changes, this is because vast majority of support
> cases are useless cases, and to handle this massive volume support
> tries to assume which support cases are legitimate problems, which are
> PEBKAC and in which cases the user already solved their problem by the
> time you read their ticket and will never respond back. The last case
> is so common that every first-line adopts the strategy of 'pinging'
> you, regardless how good and clear information you provide, they ask
> some soft-ball question, to see if you're still engaged.
> Having a named engineer changes this process, because the engineer
> will quickly learn that you don't open useless cases, that the issue
> you're having is legitimate, and will actually read the ticket and
> think about the problem.

This. Absolutely this. I've been a TAC engineer at a major vendor for
a few years in the late 2000s. I found it interesting to observe that
the quality of cases is related to the size of the customer. In my
experience at that time, smaller customers tended to create low quality
cases but scream the loudest.

Following my experiences in TAC and hiring by several large networks, I
would give operations people guidance on how to actually open a TAC
case. More specifically, you know what the first questions will usually
be a canned response like "how long has this been happening, what is the
impact on production", etc. So, I've trained people to include that,
and all relevant logs that a TAC engineer can ask for, in the case to
begin with. And, of course, add a proper synopsis. "Router down" is
not.

Despite not having a named engineer, our cases were handled a lot 
quicker all of a sudden.

Lastly, not every vendor has a first line group of juniors. Some
vendors you call will have the phone answered within 30 seconds by
an actual proper TAC engineer who will open the case for you if one
does not exist yet.

Thanks,

Sabri