Support Escalation Management Manager

Job Description

In the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Support Escalation Management Manager, you will earn our customers’ trust and loyalty by swiftly mitigating the business impact of our customers’ most critical support issues. This opportunity will allow you to be responsible for the day-to-day management of the team and ensure that customer and business expectations are met.

Our Senior Support Escalation Management (Service Manager) function is positioned and aligned with our customers as Chief Operating Officers within the account, strategically placed to ensure that we have the appropriate level of engagement to support and drive the customer’s reactive support landscape and improve operational health. As such you will manage a team of these individuals supporting some of the world’s largest companies, public sector depts and not for profit organisations pursuing strategic activities, and utilising Microsoft technologies to modernise their business.

We create an environment where you can do your best work and build a career both in the Service Management function as well as the wider Microsoft organisation. As your interests and goals evolve, we will enable you to connect you with a diverse, thriving community that can help you grow.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 100% from home with occasional travel required and attendance supporting customer on-site engagement infrequently.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

You will manage a team of up to 16 Service Managers in order to provide them with coaching, growth opportunities and CARE, ensuring that they are delivering maximum impact for their customers which they support.

People Management:

• You will deliver success through team empowerment and accountability by practicing management excellence principles like model, coach, care. You will enable the individuals on your team to operate in the service delivery details by helping unblock, make connections, facilitate, address escalations, support team and individual growth.

Customer Resolution:

• Manage resolution of highly sensitive, political, visible, and reputational issues and act as a primary contact for escalated issues and build strategic cross-functional relationships to resolve systematic customer issues and provide coaching and mentorship to Support Escalation Managers.
• Acts as an escalation contact to understand issues and improve the experiences of account-aligned customers independently. Supports the Service Managers as they maintain and develop relationships with various internal and external teams to resolve customer issues.
• Acts as a leader and steering governance of projects to drive key strategic initiatives.
• Is accountable for supporting the SMs with their inter-regional, cross-regional, cross-group, or account team unit (ATU) initiatives by gathering feedback and identifying resources to improve the customer support experience for a group of customers or a specific region/area. Models best practices to support the customer experience.
• Acts as a High Judgement Decision Maker to provide strategic direction and status updates to customers and internal stakeholders through various channels of communication regarding issues, following the documented process.
• Directs SMs in their management of strategic projects designed to improve resolution times, customer satisfaction, and support experience.
• Is responsible for the achievement of KPIs for the SMs within the team and their effectiveness in driving a world-class reactive support experience.

Collaboration:

• Promote the development of networks and provide guidance on leveraging relationships and identify reoccurring roadblocks across the team and escalate as needed.
• Collaborates with engineering teams and/or operations teams to identify the right resources by escalation. Acts as a subject matter expert on the written protocol to ensure the right groups are engaged to resolve customer issues.
• Owns escalated issues and oversees account-aligned customer incidents to identify and remove barriers. Ensures existing processes are not a blocker to customer issue resolution and acts as a key player during process improvement efforts. Shares consistent processes and best practices on how to handle moderate to highly complex cases and provide continual improvement to the customer experience.
• Resolve strategic issues with functional leaders and provide expert direction for handling complex cases.

Communication:

• Oversee and provide guidance on conference calls to help others manage customer and field expectations and liaise between team members and senior leaders to keep all informed about incident resolution and ensure alignment around customer expectations, response and resolution.
• Manages customer and field expectations around issue response and represents the company independently from a position of escalation / seniority. Ensures customer and MSFT internal stakeholders stay informed on the response and resolution status of customer issues. Communicates and influences internally to drive faster issue resolution.
• Takes ownership of and nurtures relationships with internal teams and partners and proactively communicates with senior leadership on issues complex in scope and provides solutions to resolve them. Paves the way and removes obstacles for their team members to deliver world-class reactive support experiences.

Process Improvement:

• Gather and consolidate feedback across teams and identify process breakdowns and ensure resolution or progress and lead process improvement projects.
• Identifies systematic issues and process breakdown and participates in a project or workgroup to improve systematic issues and internal processes.
• Creates an executive summary detailing the customer issue, impact on the business, and status of the resolution. Identifies patterns in customer issues and supports the delivery of strategies to resolve them.
• Represents the Service Management function within the Service Center Monthly Business Review rhythm.

Vendor Relationships

• Oversee relationships with outsource vendors and foster positive cultural and behavioral changes.
• Participates and drives relationships with outsource vendors to resolve issues and foster positive cultural and behavioral changes.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Proven experience in people management, demonstrating strong leadership and team-building skills.
• Extensive background in the technology industry, with a track record of working in similar companies.
• Expertise in incident, problem, and crisis management, ensuring swift and effective resolution of critical issues.
• Demonstrated ability to manage and lead global teams, fostering collaboration across diverse geographical locations.
• Extensive experience in engaging with C-suite stakeholders, effectively communicating and aligning strategic objectives.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proven track record of building and executing leadership of high-performing teams of senior customer colleagues.
• ITIL or similar Service Management Accreditation at Practitioner level or higher.
• Experience working with Microsoft products and services.
• Cloud Technology Certification (Azure Fundamentals. M365 Fundamentals).
• Project management experience.

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire / transfer and every two years thereafter.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.