Customer Success Account Manager

Job Description

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.
Customer Success: Microsoft aspires to help our customers achieve their own digital transformation, leveraging the power of Microsoft Cloud solutions and support offerings. To this end, Microsoft invests in a dedicated Customer Success team that will help Microsoft customers successfully realize their business outcomes.
We are always learning. Insatiably curious. We lean into uncertainty, take risks, and learn quickly from our mistakes. We build on each other’s ideas because we are better together. We stand in awe of what humans dare to achieve and are motivated every day to empower others to do more and achieve more through our technology and innovation. Together we make a difference.
As a Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM), you are the primary customer facing role responsible for Customer Success through delivery management of cross-functional programs and strong customer and internal stakeholder relationships. The prevailing business priority is the customers’ successful adoption and productive use of Microsoft cloud technologies. You are front and center with our customers in support of their digital journey and empowering them to achieve more and accelerating customer value.
The CSAM role is a leader on the account team who partners with the Account Team Unit (ATU) to programmatically align the consumption plan to the account plan and leads the delivery execution and support team. The CSAM orchestrates prioritized programs, projects, and milestones for customer business value realization and consumption.
Key Accountabilities include:
Partner with your customer and Account Team

• Bring Customer and industry insights to the Account Planning rhythm to lead prioritized programs that drive outcomes across all solution areas.

Accountable for the Consumption plan

• In partnership with the account team, accountable for the development and execution of the internal and customer-facing aspects cross-cloud consumption plan, identifying and activating technical resources to deliver customer outcomes. Ensures prioritized Success Engagements progress from Validate through Commit with a Program Delivery plan and up-to-date milestones.

Engages Customer Sponsors

• Establishes and nurtures strong sponsorship and manages the relationships with the customer to drive the execution of the support coverage model, consumption roadmap & delivery execution oversight. and manage the communication & escalation strategies with customer stakeholders.

Leverages technology knowledge

• Has the technical depth and confidence to identify and propose outcomes related to the deployment and health of customer solutions and workloads, leveraging deeper technical resources as needed

Accountable for Delivery Orchestration & Support Outcomes that support Solution and Operational Health outcomes

• Provides leadership and orchestration across the Success & Support (CSU) team, Microsoft technical specialists, customer technical teams, Microsoft and partner project teams, balances prioritization between implementing new capabilities and ensuring customer operational health, while fulfilling Support contract obligations
• Define outcomes to improve the health, performance, and business capabilities of the prioritized workloads to drive customer value realization.
• Track, escalate, and plan for the remediation of technical blockers and provide engineering feedback to further our product and solutions as appropriate.

Responsibilities

Deliver an easy and connected customer experience and build trust through customer centricity across the life cycle
1.Deliver a connected customer experience by developing and nurturing trusted relationships with customer BDMs and TDMs, and with your internal stakeholders; integrate strongly with the AE and ATS. Align with your Account Team(s) to develop and maintain stakeholder maps and guide your relationships. 2.Understand your Customers' strategy in order to provide a considered point of view and collaborate with the rest of your Account Team in the regular account planning process. Perform portfolio and Success Engagement prioritization to align with your Customers' strategy and Microsoft consumption priorities. 3.Prioritize, develop, and manage your Customers’ ongoing solution and operational health programs, and provide supportive oversight of your customers’ reactive support experience.
Create customer value by accelerating, expanding and optimizing consumption and the support experience (Internal Perspective)
1.Accelerate customer value, digital transformation, and production level consumption cross cloud through planning coverage, contributing to Area targets for Prioritized and Cloud-Impacting MIP. Optimize resource management by adhering to staffing processes. 2.Provide strong delivery execution leadership within the account team and contribute to Area targets for support programs and projects attached to success engagements. Drive and orchestrate overall customer experience for prioritized programs across all Solution Areas, Partner and MCS led projects; where prioritized, ensure consumption plans are created and maintained. Drive Support Modernization by fulfilling contractual obligations and partnering with Sellers to drive renewals and transition Customers to Unified as Premier sunsets in FY22. Contribute to Area delivery and bookings targets, backed by timely and programmatic planning of proactive and DSE services.
Transform the customer experience with technical intensity and actioning customer feedback
1.Support Area targets for Contactability and ensuring that constructive feedback is followed up through the Close the Loop process. Identify and nominate Customer references and internal success stories; share insights, best practices and IP. 2.Intentionally and passionately pursue your own relevant skill and capability development and application as assigned to achieve your goals and the technical expectations of the role. 3.To support CSAM role transformation, actively seek out coaching and perspective opportunities with your extended team, and prioritize scheduled monthly 1:1 meetings with your manager. Contribute to the success of others through knowledge sharing, coaching and community contribution.

Qualifications

We are looking for a highly motivated and passionate Customer Success Account Manager to drive program management for strategic customers that have a significant number of key cross-cloud workload engagements running concurrently. As the CSAM you will drive consumption planning & execution, as well as the acceleration of cloud adoption from Pilot/MVP to production for customer cloud engagements. This will be done by providing cross-engagement oversight, resource orchestration, and blocker escalation, all while operating in close collaboration with key account team unit members and business partners who are supporting Customer Success.
Experience: 5+ years of success in complex technical engagement management and/or program management required. Prior work experience in a Program Manager or Engagement Manager position focused on Cloud and software/services solution preferred.
Leadership: This role requires strong communication skills, as well as displaying executive presence and confidence in varying levels of customer situations. The CSAM must show leadership in teams comprised of Microsoft, Partner and Customer resources who may be engaged in the delivery of complex solutions for overall Customer Success.
Relationship Building: Proven track record of building relationships with senior customer executives in large or highly strategic accounts. Experience in managing various stakeholder relationships to get consensus on solutions/engagements required.
Program Management: Excellent skills in planning for a portfolio of engagements, cross-group collaboration, resource orchestration, communications, analytical capabilities, and attention to detail required. The CSAM will be accountable for the development and execution of a cross-cloud consumption plan, and operational health of the customer solutions deployed today and in the future.
Collaboration and Communication: Proven track record of driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts, and ensuring follow-through with verbal and written communication. Strong presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences and various levels of management (Senior Executives, IT management, Database administrators Data Scientist, and BDMs).
Technical Acumen:

• Experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, and migrations preferred.
• Knowledge of market trends and competitive insights preferred.
• Understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs preferred.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or related field preferred.
• Certification(s) in the following preferred:

oProject Management: ACP, PMI, or equivalent Project Management certification oProsci or equivalent Change Management certification oInformation Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation certification oTechnologies: Cloud, mobile, web application development, cloud-native application architecture oMicrosoft certification in relevant technologies (e.g.: Azure, M365)
Travel:

• Travel required: 0-30%

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