Director of Area Support

With over 17,000 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.

Our Area Incident Manager + will be 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. As such you will 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. We create an environment where you can do your best work and build a career both in the Area IM+ role as well as the wider Microsoft. As your interests and goals evolve, we will enable you to connect you with a diverse, thriving community that can help you grow.

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**:
Collaborate and manage customer reactive escalations to help engage the right stakeholders across Microsoft and reduce the time escalations are impacting customers.
- Conduct monthly service reviews and executive business reviews to proactively track progress against the reactive & operational health improvement plans.
- Engage and strengthen relationships with key customer decision makers / sponsors / influencers to align delivery priorities in support of their strategy as well as proactively coordinating support teams when key projects are going live or mission critical architecture is being updated.
- Support the drive for increased customer consumption of Microsoft Cloud Technologies, and reactive support health scores to derive actionable insights to help customers optimize their Microsoft infrastructure, leveraging incident data and flagging risks with current implementations/deployments.
- Engage with the account team closely to drive long running/high priority cases to a successful closure by removing blockers, engaging appropriate stakeholders, and providing Executive communication (both within the customer and Microsoft).
- Having the correct network across CSS, CCSE and Engineering to speed up escalations and connect the right groups / stakeholders for resolution.
- Should a reactive support crisis occur, lead the virtual account team and stakeholders.

**Qualifications**:

- A passion for technology, driving customer value, strategic outcomes, while working with the best people in the industry.
- A growth mindset to be a part of an elite team of diverse individuals focused on making our customers successful.
- A proven ability to partner with account teams to build and retain customer relationships, across business and technical functions within their organization.
- A track record of providing leadership and orchestration of an internal delivery team.
- Demonstrable experience of driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts, communicating successfully and being able to present confidently to large or small audiences including C-Level Executives.
- Demonstrable experience working in a customer-facing role, e.g., Customer Success, Account Management or Service Delivery.
- Exceptional communication, presentation, and facilitation skills, particularly an innate ability to remain calm in the face of high-impact escalations.
- Demonstrable accountability, customer advocacy, conflict resolution, growth mindset, stakeholder influence, ability to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and all levels of management.
- An ability to multi-task and work in a dynamic environment with constant change to address emerging issues and challenges, ideally within an arena of rapid cloud deployment and growth.

Required Qualifications:

- 11+ 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 Master's Degree in technology, business, or related field AND 6+ years technology industry, customer service, or related experience
- OR equivalent experience.
- Crisis Management and C-Suite communication experience.
- Cloud Technology Certification (minimum of Azure Fundamentals and/or M365 Fundamen