Support Escalation Management IC4

Overview MCAPS-Core accelerates customer outcomes and business growth. By uniting product, engineering, marketing, sales, customer success, and partners around a common customer mission, we help customers realize value faster and turn innovation into measurable business impact. Through deep technical expertise and differentiated go-to-market execution, we win competitively, capture market share, and scale repeatable growth motions. We differentiate through value creation - delivering world-class, AI-powered customer experiences that accelerate adoption, strengthen loyalty, and create sustainable competitive advantage, driving growth that outpaces the market. Within MCAPS - Core, 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 (Service 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. The Senior Support Escalation Manager (Service Manager) 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. I work with some of the world’s largest companies, public sector depts and not for profit organizations pursuing strategic activities, utilizing Microsoft technologies to modernize their business. 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 Account Escalation Partner Owns the reactive support experience for a defined set of strategic or mission critical accounts, often funded directly by the customer. Acts as the primary escalation and crisis contact for those accounts, orchestrating internal and external stakeholders (Customer Success Account Managers [CSAMs], engineering, incident managers, legal/PR, executives) to resolve high impact issues while representing the customer’s business impact. Proactively assesses account risk, maintains and tests incident response plans (e.g., Major Incident Response Plans [MIRPs]), and run drills or “Get to Green” plans to prevent recurrence and improve overall account health. Maintains a deep, ongoing relationship with designated customers’ executive and technical leaders, enabling them to anticipate escalations, influence architecture and operations, and shift conversations from reactive to strategic. 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 acts as a key player during process improvement efforts. Mentors other Support Escalation team members on how to handle moderate to highly complex cases. Leads moderate to highly complex incidents (and customers) with minimal guidance, navigating ambiguity, incomplete information, and high-stress environment (customer, account team, leadership, etc.) Acts as the single point of accountability for complex, high?impact escalations, removing blockers, accelerating decision?making, and ensuring alignment across engineering, support, and leadership teams. Works with partners to ensure operational rhythm during incidents, including checkpoints, ownership, and escalation updates. Mentors others in structured incident leadership, beyond only case handling. Collaborates with engineering teams and/or operations teams to identify the right resource. Acts as a subject matter expert on the written protocol to ensure the right groups are engaged to resolve customer issues. Builds and enhances technical contacts, SME’s and leaders who can assist in identifying proper resources to assist with issues that cross-Strategic Business Unit (SBU) responsibility. Communication Manages customer and field expectations around issue response and represents the company independently, prioritizing security as a key component of customer satisfaction. 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, incorporating effective security practices to mitigate risks. Provides definitive updates to teams involved as required (e.g., account, Customer Success Account Manager [CSAM], Technology Managers, Leadership, and Executive Leadership). 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. Establishes long-term partnerships with other Strategic Business Units (SBU)s, and builds bridges to keep consistent, uniform engagement from account teams to SBU(s). Critical Event Response Manager Manages incidents and escalations as discrete transactions, focusing on rapid stabilization and resolution rather than ongoing account ownership, with engagement spanning varying levels of technical depth. Works directly with the customer or through support teams to ensure customers are informed, expectations are set, and escalation pressure is effectively managed throughout the incident lifecycle. Leads or supports bridge operations and crisis communications for escalated incidents or critical situations, ensuring consistent, accurate, and timely updates across customers, executives, and engineering, while maintaining compliance with legal, privacy, and communications standards. Drives coordination of technical resources, enforces adherence to processes, and de?escalates distressed customers, often operating across queues spanning multiple customers or specific incident types. Owns incident communications, customer, governance, and post?incident insights. Customer Resolution Provides status updates to customers and internal stakeholders through various channels of communication regarding issues, following the documented process. Utilizes AI-driven communication tools streamline interactions with stakeholders. Coordinates and communicates the escalation narrative, ensuring stakeholder alignment and driving Confidence Calls to either retain customers, solidify renewals, or take direct feedback on the product or support. Drives consistent, executive-ready escalation narrative, aligning all stakeholders on problem statement, impact, risks, and next actions. Acts on or plays a key role in strategic projects designed to improve resolution times, customer satisfaction, and support experience. Implements AI tools to monitor, evaluate, and automate routine tasks, proposing enhancements to boost efficiency and satisfaction. Identifies systemic breakdowns across escalation workflows, handoffs, and decision points, and drives cross?team improvements to increase speed, accountability, and consistency. Champions automation and standardization of escalation workflows to improve scale and consistency. Creates home-grown solutions for intake, tracking and reporting for customer businesses. Acts as a primary contact to understand issues and improve the experiences of customers independently. Maintains and develops relationships with various internal and external teams to resolve customer issues. Mentors others on the Support Escalation Management team. Acts as a key member of projects to drive key strategic initiatives. Manages incidents, which are customer-impacting issues that require coordination, communication, and stakeholder/resource management to drive timely resolution. Owns the end-to-end escalation lifecycle, where escalations are incidents that require elevated visibility or intervention that involve direct engagement with customers or senior stakeholders, including intake, triage, prioritization, resolution, and follow-up. Supports the lifecycle of incidents, which is the coordination, communication, and stakeholder/resource management. Represents Microsoft, Leadership or Strategic Business Unit (SBU) Leaders on internal/external calls. Exercises independent judgment to prioritize escalations based on customer impact, business risk, and urgency. Ensures accountability for escalation outcomes. Acts as a key player when supporting 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, including proactively addressing security needs according to Microsoft’s security standards. Leverage AI-driven sentiment analysis tools to gather real-time feedback, identify common customer pain points, and suggest proactive measures for enhancing customer service. Proactively identifies escalation risk signals by reviewing sentiment analysis results, historical escalation data, and customer feedback. Translates customer feedback, escalation themes, and sentiment data into actionable insights that inform leadership decisions and long?term experience improvements. Identifies trends across internal postmortems and suggests resources to drive opportunities within the team and across stakeholder groups in post-incident review discussions to remediate future issues. Identifies risks surfaced during escalations and ensures they are routed to proper governance channels within or outside of their Strategic Business Unit (SBU). Ensures remediation includes thorough root cause analysis and any corrective follow-ups required. Process Improvement 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. Joins and shares best practices to improve delivery and improve team performance. Identifies systematic issues and process breakdown and participates in a project or workgroup to improve systematic issues and internal processes. Actively shares new or potential changes to processes that could impact escalation delivery. Regional or Area Support Leader Owns critical customer recovery and escalation management efforts across a region, vertical, subsidiary, or segment. Aggregates patterns from escalations, delivery results, and post incident reviews to identify systemic issues, operational health risks, and process breakdowns. Drives regional or vertical Get to Green and improvement plans with Customer Service and Support (CSS), field, and Customer Success Unit (CSU) leadership. Operationalizes Crisis Prevention and Management programs across the field. Owns the development and orchestration of Customer Trust Recovery activities. Acts as the regional “voice of the customer” for reactive support, facilitating forums, managing key stakeholder relationships, and aligning CSS priorities with field and business goals, including revenue, consumption, and renewal outcomes. Leads cross team and cross region initiatives, establishes protocols and networks to accelerate resolution, and fosters sustainable changes in support quality and customer trust at scale. Technical Recovery and Stabilization Leader Leads technical recovery for complex and high-impact customer situations, executing and coordinating “get-to-green” recovery plans across multiple issues and teams. Supports and contributes to the diagnosis of root causes, orchestration of cross-functional technical resources, and restoration of service stability and customer confidence. Focuses primarily on the scope of individual or closely related incidents, contributing to multi-issue recovery scenarios that may span extended timeframes and require sustained technical coordination. Owns time-bound engagements within defined recovery scopes and drives progress toward stability and agreed outcomes. Partners with designated customers’ executive and senior technical leaders to align on recovery approach, anticipate and mitigate future escalations, and inform architecture and operational decisions that improve long-term stability. Utilizes deep technical expertise, structured recovery planning, and the ability to align support, engineering, and account teams around clear actions and priorities, influencing recovery efforts within their area of responsibility and helping shift conversations from reactive issue resolution to more proactive, strategic engagement. Identifies patterns and underlying drivers observed during recovery engagements and shares insights and recommendations with relevant teams to contribute to broader improvement efforts while remaining focused on technical recovery execution. Vendor Relationships Engages with outsourced Customer Service and Support [CSS] delivery partner specialists as part of standard support incident management and escalation resolution activities, not including the management, supervision, or direction of delivery partner resources beyond activities directly related to incident and escalation management coordination. Focuses partner engagements on coordinating efforts across teams, aligning stakeholders, and driving timely resolution of customer issues through effective collaboration, communication, and escalation management. Other: Embody our culture and values Qualifications Required 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 years of technology industry, customer service, or related experience OR equivalent experience Other Requirements: 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 requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Additional Required Qualifications: 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 Support Escalation Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $97,600 - $188,400 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $125,000 - $206,400 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.