Serviceability Manager

Job Description

Overview

With over 18,000 employees worldwide, the Microsoft Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is responsible for the strategy, design, and implementation of Microsoft’s end-to-end customer experience. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers come to us not only because we provide industry-leading products and services, but also because we provide a differentiated and connected customer experience.

Within CE&S, the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization builds trust and confidence for every person and organization through delivering a seamless support experience. In CSS, we help customers and partners resolve their issues quickly, prevent future problems from occurring, and demonstrate new ways to achieve more from their Microsoft investment.

Our customers are facing new and complex challenges keeping their data protected and secure while leaning more heavily on hybrid and cloud solutions to do so. Our newest CSS organization - Security, Compliance, Identity and Management (SCIM) - was created to further enable our commitment to our company’s collective Security strategy and our ability to handle these critical customer needs from start to finish.

We are currently seeking a manager to lead a team of experienced Senior Supportability Program Managers, dedicated Embedded Escalation Engineers (EEEs) and Beta Engineers with deep technical knowledge on a global scale. This role involves cultivating strong and meaningful relationships with product groups, Enterprise Customer Success teams, and Support Engineering Teams. Our primary goals are to drive improvements in product quality and supportability, benefiting Microsoft customers and our Delivery/Operations team.

Key areas of focus include reducing incidents, creating valuable assets for customers, enhancing support portals, managing knowledge and content initiatives, and developing tools for Support Engineers worldwide. Additionally, we are dedicated to implementing automation and AI practices to enhance efficiency and provide insights for product improvement to the Product Group teams.

As a Support Engineering Manager you will lead a team or group of Support Engineers with deep product knowledge that resolve customer technical issues. You will manage the customer relationship from a support standpoint, enable your team to deliver a great customer experience and drive Microsoft Product Improvement. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth and hone your customer relationship management skills. You will develop deep technology industry knowledge and become adept at building and leading diverse teams.

This role is flexible in that you can work up to 100% from home.

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

People Management
You lead a team/ group of product experts that solve complex customer technical issues by practicing leadership principles, driving accountability and attracting/ retaining great people

Response and Resolution
You manage the customer relationship with regards to Technical Support and acting as an escalation point for Support Engineers to remove roadblocks and help prioritize technical issues at a global level.

Readiness
You ensure your team has the technical skills required to provide a great customer experience and you collaborate with engineering /product teams to fill document gaps regarding new and existing technology

Product/Process Improvement
You communicate aggregated customer feedback and set operational frameworks and standards to drive product and process improvements

Business Integration
You identify opportunities to collaborate effectively across other teams and organizations to enable a great customer experience

Core Responsibilities:
Supportability
• Proactively drive support experience improvement with relevant engineering leadership stakeholders, including influencing product improvements on the basis of customer feedback gathered from support channels.
• Lead your team to provide feedback based on case analysis to the engineering product team that feeds into reactive (e.g. bug fixes) as well as proactive/predictive (e.g. auto-healing) product development work to drive reduction in support volumes
• Utilize AI capabilities for creating automation and streamline manual activities to drive better efficiency.
• Construct an evidence-based business case for significant engineering changes required.
• Direct proactive and predictive measures (auto-healing, deflection, self-service automation), as well as reactive measures (bug fixes)

Beta/Release And Readiness
• Engage early in the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for new products, new feature releases and build knowledge for delivery on upcoming releases. Contribute valuable experience and IP to new service owners on how to design for supportability from day one.
• Drive your team to deliver release roadmaps and build comprehensive views of engineering release pipeline through engagement with the engineering product team. Ensure your beta team works closely with the Deployment services, Learning and Development teams to enable New Release Support Readiness.

Embedded Escalation Engineering
• Use your experience to manage a team of highly skilled escalation engineers who are embedded with the product engineering teams. These are the key technical resources for the product, often possessing a stronger end-to-end view of the product than the engineering team. Create good processes and touchpoints to make sure the insights from these key resources are positioned with the product improvements for maximum effectiveness.
• Manage escalation engineers and coach them through leadership skills and the opportunities to exert their best-in-class technical skills and experiences to direct the long-term trajectory of the product itself and the service delivery teams who support it.

Success Measures: Using the OKR framework drive outcomes and ROI for customers, business, and stakeholders.

Qualifications

Skills & Qualifications:
• 12+ years related work experience (e.g., business process operations, product development/management, product marketing, business or product strategy, technical consulting, support, data analysis)
• Strong global communication skills, and skills in building organizational partnerships - across a complex stakeholder network in CSS, Engineering and Business teams. Ability to navigate and influence in a matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated experience/ability in leading both direct and virtual teams with a broad array of skills to ensure best-in-class customer outcomes.
• Relevant Bachelor’s degree or experience commensurate with job expectations for this leadership position is required.
• 5+ years of people management and business leadership experience
• 5+ years program management or technical program management experience, managing remote and globally distributed project teams
• 5+ years of experience driving engineer readiness and product quality investments.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.