Bob,
I never worked for Cisco TAC, but I was a TAC employee for two other
networking companies over a 4 year period of time. Over the past two
years, most network equipment manufacturers have had substantial backlogs
of new orders that need to be filled as soon as possible. The QA groups
are under a significant amount of pressure to get the products out the door
as soon as possible, to fullfill those backorders. The manufacturers are
under a lot of pressure to get the products assembled and shipped very
quickly. The companies that manufacturer the components that go into the
completed product are also under the gun to get the parts shipped out very
quickly.
Unfortunately, in order to get the speed, you have to take steps away from
the QA process...
The other strange phenomenon that I've seen happen before is that, since
the sales force seems to have more clout than the logistics group that
supplies the depots with spare parts, and sometimes the depots tend to get
more refurbished products than new products. Sometimes, repair technicians
do not find the problems that caused the refurbished product to be
initially sent back to the company, because they to are under pressure to
turn the product around, and ship it back out into the field, because of
the backlog with manufacturing new products.
Unfortunately, the only people in this entire cycle of chaos and bad
quality who actually have to answer directly to the customers are the poor
TAC Engineers, who have absolutely nothing to do with the entire process.
The only thing that they have the power to do is authorize the shipment of
replacement equipment to you. If that equipment is bad, TAC will have to
deal with the next irrate phone call from the next dissatisfied customer.
On a side note... After doing technical support for networking
manufacturers over a 4 year period of time, maybe 1 out of 10 customers
sent a thank you note showing appreciation for us helping them out after
the problem was resolved. Maybe 1 out of 500 asked for your manager's
email address to send a note letting them know what kind of job you did.
Cisco sends out a survey to all TAC customers, but how many people respond?
After my first consulting project was completed, the client treated us to
Filet Mignon at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. They even bought a take-home meal
for my wife!
So show your friendly TAC engineers some appreciation. If they help solve
a problem that saves your company thousands or millions of dollars, send
them a company shirt, hat, or a gift certificate to their favorite
restaurant, or just fill out the survey praising their work. Because once
they solve your problem, they are rewarded kindly by having to take the
next major disaster out of the endless case queue!
At 05:44 PM 1/23/01 -0800, Bob Johnson wrote:
>Just curious about other peoples experiences with TAC on products "gone
>bad"...
>
>1) Get call while almost in bed at 9:30 PM
>2) 3548XL GigE interface goes down...
>3) Restart and power cycle switch to no avail..
>4) Swap out GBIC and fiber patch with no more luck...
>5) Call TAC, luckily equipment is on 7x24x4 SmartNet..
>6) Actually get new switch in 3.5 hours delivered to site..
>7) While configuring notice fan does not work...
>8) Install anyways and call TAC again (luckly unit was near HVAC vent)...
>9) TAC agrees to send another unit but have to wait till next afternoon..
>10) Replacement arrives but half it's ports don't enable after boot (the
>LEDs stay sort of yellow)
>11) TAC agrees to send another but it will take (this was on a Friday) till
>Monday...
>12) Get replacement..
>13) Pull out of box and hear a serious rattle (must be atleast two parts
>loose in chassis)
>14) TAC agrees to send another unit but need 3 days to find one...
>15) Unit finally shows up and actually works (and didn't rattle)
>
>I was lucky as the first unit worked (though it's fan did not) and did not
>over heat (mainly due to it's location)... Had there been cooling problems I
>would have yanked a fan off one of the other units (though as the part was
>not a "service item" TAC did not support such creativeness)..
>Just curious as to what anyone elses TAC horror stories have been like?
>
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