Area Support Lead Crisis Prevention and Management

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.

As anArea Support Lead Crisis Prevention and Managementyou will own Crisis Communications for your Area and liaise with the C-Suite of Microsoft’s most strategic customers, acting as a trusted advisor and partner for your Area’s Leadership (CVP/AVP/GM). You’ll be the Commander and Technical Leader during a Service Incident orlarge scale event, co-ordinating key leaders and decision makers across our Support and Engineering Organisations. You’ll have executive-facing communication skills to restore confidence, and partner with the customer’s Account Team to prevent recurrences through the Customer Engagement Plan to improve and shape the support experience, acting with urgency to produce the best possible outcomes. 

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.

Customer Resolution 

• Required to be on-call during shifts which will include nights and weekends and available to take ownership of escalations to Senior Leaders, liaising between the customer and Senior Leaders across organizations within Microsoft. 

• Acts as a subject matter expert on best practices to support the customer experience. 

• Leads strategic projects designed to improve resolution times, customer satisfaction, and support experience. Provides examples and direction to prioritize efforts to  prevent and reduce escalations/crises. 

Collaboration 

• Leverages relationships across Area CSU, Support and Product Groups to remove roadblocks. Establishes and oversees the development of written protocols to ensure customer issues are resolved. Identifies reoccurring roadblocks across the Area and escalates as needed. 

• Owns escalated issues and manages Area-escalated customer crises 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 guidance to Support Escalation team members on how to handle moderate to highly complex cases. 

Communication 

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

• Leverages precision questioning techniques to understand the pain points of the customer experience during Crisis and then proactively addresses the People/Process/Technology blockers identified. 

• Customer engagement – both reactive (emergency) and proactive (sponsorship). Confidence calls after outage. Involved in service incident (SI) aka outage Crisis and non-outage crisis for specific, strategic customers 

Process Improvement 

• Support Area and regional leadership and collaborate with the Area Business Partner to identify systematic issues and leads process improvement efforts to ensure continuous improvement  Recommend process improvements and support the Area Connected Reactive Support forums with identified actions. 

• Crafts and executes executive summaries and identifies patterns across customer issues. Creates strategies to resolve reoccurring or highly sensitive issues in partnership with Area, Support and Product Group leadership. 

• Own Service Incident or crisis response and management in the Area (before, during and after) – ensure understanding of Field roles and responsibilities. Accountable for ensuring the area is trained. 

Other 

• Embody ourculture andvalues 

Required/minimum qualifications 

• 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 8+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience 

• • OR equivalent experience. 

Additional or preferred qualifications 

• Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 12+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience 

• • OR Bachelor's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 15+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience 

• • OR equivalent experience. 

• 5+ years experience managing projects. 

• 5+ years experience working with Microsoft products and services. 

• Crisis Management and C-Suite communication experience. 

• Cloud Technology Certification (minimum of Azure Fundamentals and/or M365 Fundamentals). 

• Project or Program management experience.  

• Experience working with Microsoft products and services.   

• Advanced Cloud Technology Certification levels such as Level 200 and 300 certifications in Microsoft Cloud Technologies. 

• Knowledge and understanding of Unified Deal Construction preferred.  

Support Escalation Management IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $277,200 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 $165,600 - $303,600 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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 aboutrequesting accommodations.