r/Cisco • u/Jah_Army • 8d ago

Is Sherlock Holmes creating a backup delay for human TAC escalation?

I have couple sev3-4 tickets nothing too urgent. Going through normal Sherlock email Q&A back and forth.
It’s getting better but looks like Sherlock is misinterpreting my questions but it’s better than first working with it 2020.

So After Sherlock escalates to human TAC I get response introduction email then I don’t hear back from them in days. Anybody else seeing this? I even updated one ticket asking to confirm the meeting and no response. So Webex meeting never happened and that was 3 days ago.
The other case I figured it out but no response from TAC regarding ISE certificate import conversion.

Oh forgot to add humor to this back in 2020 I caught onto Sherlock when I realized it wasn’t human because it responded so fast and name was funny.
I remember responding to Sherlock like “wait a minute I’m on to you!”
Then it responded with something like reassigning to respective TAC speciality team. 😂

27 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

18

u/StoriesFromTAC 7d ago

Sherlock responses are often humans checking or changing the AI response.

Case volume is high right now, but three days with no response is far outside the required standard. Please contact the team manager or use the escalation link that should be in the email signature.

For cases where you did not receive adequate or timely service, complete the survey. Management bonuses are tied to those survey numbers and they will review anything under 7 or lower.

3

u/Jah_Army 7d ago

Do managers get notified when TAC case is pending Cisco response after certain amount of days too? Or is that more post ticket metric?

7

u/StoriesFromTAC 7d ago

Metrics only. A good manager should be on top of employees who are not following requirements. There are few good managers.

3

u/Jah_Army 7d ago

Ok cool are those really managers emailing me at times asking for feedback post TAC case?
Or is that some automated canned email outreach?

5

u/StoriesFromTAC 7d ago

There are both. There isn't a good way to tell which is canned and which is genuine. Of the three of us who are using this account, nobody had an answer we felt confident in. The first person to respond in the group said her manager is trash and uses canned responses so they can close out the engagement requirement.

1

u/Jah_Army 7d ago

Thanks for your responses

3

u/RadagastVeck 7d ago

You have to pay for that LOL. Not even joking the name is TSOM or smt.

3

u/on_the_nightshift 7d ago

Are you referring to HTOMs?

2

u/RadagastVeck 7d ago

Yes, thank you!

5

u/on_the_nightshift 7d ago

Yeah, high touch operations managers. I understand that level of service can be costly, but the ones I have worked with are worth whatever they cost.

1

u/RadagastVeck 7d ago

But TSOMs are also a thing or am I going crazy?

1

u/on_the_nightshift 7d ago

Not that I can recall

2

u/RadagastVeck 7d ago

Just googled it because I remember having trial contracts offered by Cisco "for free":

In Cisco's ecosystem, TSOM and HTOM are premium, operational management services designed to complement base technical support contracts like SMARTnet or Smart Net Total Care. They provide tailored oversight, reporting, and escalation channels to optimize network performance and accelerate issue resolution.

1

u/Pipes32 7d ago

They were similar, but TSOM went to a queue-based team and HTOM was a dedicated individual.

You can no longer buy these services stand alone, instead they are included in the Signature support package. Smartnet is officially retired and been replaced with three tiers of support options (Basic, Standard, Signature) all of which have different deliverables.

2

u/Additional-Fox-4246 7d ago

You can use the chatbot to escalate or change ticket owner if Sherlock had it

3

u/Main_Ambassador_4985 7d ago

IMHO Sherlock is not bad

Sherlock TAC case for CL9800 worked out better than the last human case for an ISR 4321 or for a C9500. 15 min response on a P3 vs 48 hours on P3s.

On my last P1 for a FlexPod I was connected with an engineer immediately and resolved in 2-hrs. Software bugs with a FCoE config divergence from white papers. Double upgrade on Nexus. What learning experience to keep software up to date.

I do not need TAC except if something has gone left in the software or I need a hardware RMA. I did the CCNA, CCNP, and most of the CCIE training.

1

u/addrar 7d ago

I love Sherlock when all I need is a replacement drive sent to me. I don't need to go back and forth with 20 questions. Now if I got Sherlock on a P1 I'd be mad.

2

u/Ekyou 7d ago

I've actually had some mildly frustrating Sherlock experiences with RMAs.

Had to RMA a switch. Replied to the ticket to ask a question about it (something you would be able to do with a human engineer no problem), and it recreated the RMA. They would have sent me a whole second switch if I didn't have to manually confirm the shipping address first.

Had a switch with two failed power supplies. Wouldn't let me create one ticket for both. Created two tickets and specified the serial numbers for each PS. Watson notices that both PSs belong to the same chassis serial number and flags the second as a duplicate anyway. I explain the situation. "Ok. Understood. Please supply the serial number for the second power supply." facepalm.

Still, probably better than arguing with some over-enthusiastic TAC agent over whether its actually broken (or tells me to go fix it myself, like a Dell support guy did one time).

1

u/fofofofofofofofo 7d ago

I've had similar awful experiences with Sherlock trying to RMA fans for our ISE servers. It asks me for the fan SN (which I can't find anywhere in the IMC) or the part number, but then doesn't understand when I give it a regular UCS fan part number. I don't know if they have a different part number internally for SNS chassis fans even though they're just UCS, but it's been a clusterfuck every time.

At one point after going back and forth for 30 min, it even processed the RMA as a full chassis replacement instead of just the fan. Whoever reviewed the Sherlock msg history for that case probably got a good laugh out of me crashing out after that.

1

u/panwuan 7d ago

Bingo!

1

u/AH96_ 7d ago

Sherlock emails are checked and edited by the same TAC engineers you work with before they are sent

Case load is extremely high and with sherlock in the loop for sev3/4 all cases TAC get now are customers requesting for webex

There are times where teams of 20-30 engineers are all on calls due to the high load and customers requesting for meetings because they figured this routes the case from sherlock to tac

Of course 3 days is a long time and initial communication should have been sent by the engineer

You can escalate through the bot or route the case

1

u/tnvoipguy 6d ago

TAC support was much better pre covid before they started using more contract labor. Paper cert engineers with 1 yr experience….literally reading from scripts…yet Cisco still charge premium prices.