Partner Engagement Director

With over 18,000 employees worldwide, the mission of the Customer Experience & Success (CE&S) organization is to empower customers to accelerate business value through differentiated customer experiences that leverage Microsoft’s products and services, ignited by our people and culture. Come join CE&S and help us build a future where customers achieve their business outcomes faster with technology that does more.

Advocacy & Customer Trust (ACT) delivers connected support experiences to our customers to gain and keep their trust. As a company, we rely heavily on Commercial Partners to drive tech acceleration and business growth via the services and solutions they provide to Microsoft customers. In turn, our Partners rely on Microsoft to provide reliable and effective technical support that enables them to deliver customer success.

We are looking for a Partner Engagement Director. This new leadership position is part of the ACT organization within Customer Service & Support (CSS). It represents an opportunity to address a critical need for greater connection and action across the internal Microsoft ecosystem, including CSS, the Partner field and Partner Offerings, to drive an improved reactive support experience for our Commercial Partners. A brand-new role for the organization, this is an opportunity to shape the strategy and execution plan to maximize cross-group collaboration and impact by building on established ACT best practices and introducing fresh new thinking that will maximize the impact for the Partner ecosystem.

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.

Required/Minimum Qualifications 

• 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. 

• 7+ years of experience in customer success and/or customer support, business operations, change management and project management. 

• Executive maturity, organizational agility and strong impact and influence competencies, with experience working on global teams. 

• Ability to work effectively across groups (business and functions) in a fast-paced work environment, influencing without authority and driving work through others. 

Additional or Preferred Qualifications 

• Masters Degree in Business, Operations, Finance or related field AND 8+ years work experience in program management, process management, process improvement OR equivalent experience. 
• Experience working with Microsoft Partners, specifically in support, offerings or other strategic roles.  

Business Program Management IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $129,200 - $273,400 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 $162,000 - $299,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:  

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until January 17, 2025.

#CES #CSS #ACT

Partner Field Engagement

• Establish role as primary point of contact globally, across Regions and Areas, for the Partner field (including Partner Success Organization, Global Partner Solutions, and the Customer Success Account Managers supporting Partners) to enable productive cross organizational engagement to drive improvements in the reactive support experience for Partners.
• Own and facilitate regular business reviews with the Partner field to provide an overview of CSS priorities and initiatives, a review of Partner performance, updates on improvement plans and identification of emerging trends and opportunities. Capture and actively manage agreed upon improvement priorities.

Partner Support Experience Governance

• Establish and maintain deep understanding of Partner support experience across each of CSS’s Support Business Units (SBUs), including global, regional and cohort (e.g. top partner) experience trends.
• Act as the voice of the Partner internally to identify experience gaps, working across SBUs to ensure effective corrective action / Get to Green plans are in place.

Partner Escalation Management & Leadership Engagement

• Design and drive awareness and usage of appropriate Partner Escalation channels.
• Play a supporting role in critical escalations, including facilitation and participation in Partner confidence calls to ensure effective resolution.
• Identify trends and opportunities to improve the escalation experience and ensure corrective actions are implemented.
• Establish a playbook for CSS leadership and sponsorship for Top Partners to enable ongoing connection and support of the relationship with the highest value Partners for Microsoft’s commercial business

Cross-CE&S Partner Advocacy

• Active engagement with Partner Incident Management team to evolve the capability to better meet Partner needs.
• Active engagement with CSS strategic priority owners to ensure inclusion of Partner requirements and monitor progress and impact. Current examples include complexity-based routing and crisis communications and management.
• Engagement with NSDI (CSS’s New Support Delivery Intake) and Unified Solutions (Partner Offers) team to provide feedback on offer gaps and influence new design for offers/pilots
• Engagement with the CE&S Customer Advocacy team focused on the Partner segment to provide feedback on initiatives designed to enhance the Partner experience
• Engagement with CE&S Global Customer Experience team to represent the voice of the Partner regarding the reactive partner support experience

Other

• Embody our and .