Senior Support Escalation Manager

About the Role

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.

In the Customer Service & Support (CSS) organization we are looking for people with a passion for delivering customer success. As a Senior Support Escalation Manager, you will be the primary contact managing escalated customer and partner issues. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, hone your problem-solving, collaboration and orchestration skills, and deepen your relationship management expertise.

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

• Serve as the primary point of contact to understand issues, enhance the overall partner experience, and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to efficiently coordinate issue resolution.
• Mentor team members and contribute to strategic projects aimed at improving resolution times and customer satisfaction.
• Provide regular status updates to customers and internal stakeholders, analyse retrospective data, and recommend improvements based on identified trends.
• Partner with engineering and operations teams to identify appropriate resources, manage escalations for account-aligned partners, and ensure processes support timely issue resolution.
• Set and manage customer and field expectations, keeping stakeholders informed of response and resolution progress while driving clear internal communication to accelerate outcomes.
• Identify systemic issues, participate in continuous improvement initiatives, and develop executive summaries highlighting patterns in customer challenges.
• Build and manage relationships with outsourced vendors to support effective issue resolution.
• Leverage relationships across teams to remove roadblocks and establish written protocols for customer issue resolution.
• Identify reoccurring roadblocks across the team and escalate as needed. Own escalated issues and manage account-aligned customer incidents.
• Ensure existing processes are not a blocker to customer issue resolution and influence process improvement efforts with a global perspective.
• Act as an expert and provide informal guidance to Support Escalation team members on handling complex cases.
• Manage customer and field expectations around issue response and represent the company independently.
• Ensure customer and MSFT internal stakeholders stay informed on issue status. Communicate and influence internally to drive faster issue resolution.
• Identify and build strategic relationships with internal teams, partners, and senior leadership to resolve complex issues.
• Surface feedback from the team and drive collaboration across functions to identify systematic issues and lead process breakdowns.
• Create strategy for process improvements and lead projects to improve internal processes.
• Review postmortem executive summaries and identify patterns across customer issues. Create strategies to resolve reoccurring or highly sensitive issues in partnership with leadership.
• Own and lead relationships with outsource vendors to resolve issues and foster positive cultural and behavioral changes.
• Embody Microsoft's Culture and Values.

Qualifications

• Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 3+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 4+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR 7+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR equivalent experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and / or government security screening requirements.
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: Required upon hire and every two years thereafter.
• Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 6+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 5+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR 8+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR equivalent experience.
• Experience working with Microsoft products and services.
• Cloud Technology Certification (Azure Fundamentals. M365 Fundamentals).
• Prior Incident and escalation management experience.
• Experience in C-level stakeholder management.
• Additional Languages such as Spanish / Portuguese advantageous.

Key skills/competency

• Support Escalation Management
• Customer Resolution
• Stakeholder Management
• Process Improvement
• Problem Solving
• Communication
• Relationship Management
• Team Mentoring
• Incident Management
• Vendor Management