Microsoft Looking For Director, Strategic Customer Experience & Engagement at Issaquah, WA Full Time

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.

Director, Strategic Customer Experience and Engagement is a manager role in the Customer Experience & Success organization, reporting to the Chief of Staff of the Customer Experience & Success CVP. This person will be focused on a broad view of customer experience, managing the most complex relationship-level customer experience, and transforming our key journeys, for the assigned customer, to be best in class. This role requires an individual with strong customer facing experience to serve as the CVP, CE&S, designee across an array of customer accounts and will be an expert in the assigned customer’s experience…partnering across the Microsoft eco-system to co-create amazing experiences and address complex issues across the entire customer lifecycle.

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

Customer Experience – Lead an executive customer program that touches all our large accounts to ensure a high touch – appreciation program with the right scalable touchpoints for each of these accounts.

Partner with internal Account teams, define proactive customer engagement process inclusive of usage, for top strategic customers Help drive customer technology outcomes and identify areas for future sales and consumption growth.

Influence the evolution of how Microsoft provides end-to-end customer experience by providing additional customer perspective to the internal stakeholders based on your customers’ experiences/feedback/input.

Be a spokesperson for Microsoft strategy with the customer – share our digital transformation vision with executives including product investments/roadmap, strategic acquisitions, and partnerships. Help position against competitors in the account.

Open doors – use customer relationship to help facilitate introductions to the account team. Act as a connector for the Microsoft account team both inside Microsoft, as well as inside the customer organization.

Increase customer satisfaction through a tailored relationship.

Break down internal blockers, influence and land health and experience improvements for the customer, including removing roadblocks and red tape as the primary point of contact for major escalations. This includes program management leadership for the resolution of these complex customer issues that cut across Microsoft organizations.

Help drive faster and better returns from the customer’s investment with Microsoft.

Drive proactive discussions around strategy decisions, acquisitions, and partnerships that could impact the customer relationship.

Serve as a customer experience champion and senior leader in the Customer Experience & Success organization and a direct access and feedback channel to Microsoft executives relative to the customer account. This involves partnering closely with a wide array of stakeholders, including the Sales, Customer Service & Support and Customer Success.

This role is expected to manage senior executive relationships internally and externally, handle extremely sensitive situations with the highest degree of professionalism and be well versed in conflict de-escalation and resolution of highly complex systemic issues impacting vendor/customer relationships.

Business Program Planning and Design

Identifies and scopes opportunities to develop new programs and improve current ones impacting Microsoft. Drives the identification and resolution of root problems (e.g., root-cause analysis), the definition of the program strategy, gathers program requirements, identifies resource needs, creates the project plan and targets, and works across teams to align on the plan of record. Improves operations of existing programs by applying industry methodology, defining crucial complex program issues, assessing various scenarios, and selecting the optimal scenario to resolve issues. Drives clarity in highly crucial program issues and strives for simplification.

Drives strategic alignment among cross-functional (e.g., organizational, product, business) stakeholders (e.g., Engineering) to design crucial programs from initiation to delivery. Provides thought leadership to produce collateral (e.g., proposals, strategy walking deck, internal and external pitch content) to incorporate stakeholder needs and ensure the business objectives are met.

Business Program Excellence and Execution

Drives the rhythm of business (ROB) during plan execution to ensure participants and stakeholders are communicating and responding according to the necessary cadence. Drives others to work across teams (e.g., Landing, Design, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, Technical Program Management) to ensure all program requirements are understood and can be met.

Acts as a subject matter expert to evangelize crucial programs to stakeholders, partners, and customers to gain buy in. Drives others to adapt communication style and storytelling strategy according to audience and business needs.

Own content, coordination, delivery and CVP support for Executive Briefing Center engagements, industry customer facing events and Microsoft Customer Advisory Boards.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:
12+ years work experience in program management, process management, or process improvement

OR Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Operations, Finance or related field AND 8+ years work experience in program management, process management, process improvement OR equivalent experience.

Ability to interact confidently with senior leaders of an organization to present/defend/clarify concerns or manage issues regarding projects and programs, and present solutions.

Experience leading/navigating large cross-functional teams is a critical for success

Preferred Qualifications:
Prior customer escalation management experience

Engagement expertise, storytelling skills and passion for delighting customers, advocating on their behalf, creating great customer experiences, and understanding the linkage between these experiences and business success.

The ability to understand the parts of the business and their interrelationships. This includes skill in understanding the industry, competition, and expected future developments and challenges, the business’s competitive strengths and weaknesses, opportunities to grow the business and awareness of the environment for opportunities.

Strong multi-tasking aptitude to manage multiple issues/projects in a fast-paced environment.

Highly organized, with great attention to ensure required details are not overlooked

Results and action oriented

Working ability to remain effective under stress and respond to pressure in a manner acceptable to others and to the organization.

Prior people management leading teams and/or v-teams

Strong relationship building skills

Customer Obsessed

The salary for this role in the state of Colorado is between $161,800 and $242,600.

At Microsoft, certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee’s role.

Benefits/perks listed here may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.US-based employees gain access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan and company match, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, and fitness benefits, among others.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.