Support Escalation Manager - GetHelp

With more than 45,000 employees and partners worldwide, the Customer Experience and Success (CE&S) organization is on a mission to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. We drive cross-company alignment and execution, ensuring that we consistently exceed customers’ expectations in every interaction, whether in-product, digital, or human-centered. CE&S is responsible for all up services across the company, including consulting, customer success, and support across Microsoft’s portfolio of solutions and products. Join CE&S and help us accelerate AI transformation for our customers and the world.

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 are powered by Microsoft’s AI technology to help consumers, businesses, partners, and more, resolve their issues quickly and securely, helping prevent future problems from occurring and achieving more from their Microsoft investment.

As part of the Advocacy and Customer Trust (ACT) organization, the GetHelp team intakes and resolves cases that come to Microsoft outside of the designed support model. We seek to learn from every interaction and advocate for an effortless support experience to bring the voice of the customer into the design of the future. We work across the complete range of Microsoft offerings including software, services and devices.
The GetHelp Support Escalation Manager is responsible for handling customer/partner escalations that come to the team through various internal channels. Escalations will require direct customer interaction with the goal of identifying and resolving issues related to Microsoft technology and services, ensuring they are resolved within established guidelines/policies. These escalations are some of our most challenging and difficult customer issues and will at times require dealing with highly sensitive customers and situations. 
Support Escalation Managers are highly motivated people with empathy, passion, integrity, and a knack for investigation & problem solving. Support Escalation Managers represent Microsoft by providing world class service and displaying our core principles in all their work.
In addition to the above, the Senior Support Escalation Manager plays a part in mentoring and coaching other team members, and work extensively with our service delivery organization for situations that require additional local language or deep technical skills.

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.

Collaboration
Owns escalated issues and manages account-aligned customer incidents to identify and remove barriers. Ensures existing processes are not a blocker to customer issue resolution and influences the direction of process improvement efforts with a global perspective. Acts as an expert and provides informal guidance to Support Escalation team members on how to handle moderate to highly complex cases.

Leverages relationships across teams to remove roadblocks. Establishes and oversees the development of written protocols to ensure customer issues are resolved. Identifies reoccurring roadblocks across the team and escalates as needed.

Communication
Identifies and builds strategic relationships with internal teams, partners, and communications with senior leadership to resolve issues that are complex in scope.

Manages customer and field expectations around issue response and represents the company independently. 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.

Customer Resolution
Leads strategic projects designed to improve resolution times, customer satisfaction, and support experience.

Leads inter-regions, cross-regions, cross-group, or account team unit (ATU) initiatives by creating plans and managing relationships with other business units to improve the customer support experience for a group of customers or a specific region/area. Acts as a subject matter expert on best practices to support the customer experience.

Reviews status updates to customers and provides informal guidance to others on communicating with internal stakeholders through various channels of communication for highly sensitive or difficult issues.

Proactively coordinates resources and establishes relationships to drive opportunities within the team and across stakeholder groups in postmortem discussions to remediate future issues.

Acts as an internal expert to resolve longer running, sensitive, or escalated issues or acts as a primary contact for escalated issues on behalf of less experienced IC levels. Identifies and builds relationships with various internal and external teams and senior leaders to resolve customer issues. Leads strategic projects. Informally provides coaching, mentorship, or support to less experienced Support Escalation Managers to resolve customer issues.

Process Improvement
Reviews postmortem executive summaries and identifies patterns across customer issues. Creates strategies to resolve reoccurring or highly sensitive issues in partnership with leadership.

Surfaces feedback from the team and drives collaboration across functions to identify systematic issues and leads process breakdowns to ensure resolution/progress. Creates strategy for process improvements and leads project or workgroup to improve internal processes.

Vendor Relationships
Owns and leads relationships with outsource vendor to resolve issues and foster positive cultural and behavioral changes.

Required Qualifications:

• Extensive experience in technology industry, customer service, or related experience.
• Project management experience.
• Experience working with Microsoft products and services.
• Cloud Technology Certification (Azure Fundamentals. M365 Fundamentals).
• Prior Incident and escalation management experience.
• Proficient in C-level stakeholder management.

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.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.