Escalation Manager

Palo Alto Networks•Santa Clara, CA

12h•$164,000 - $246,000

About The Position

The Escalation Manager position is a strategic, high-visibility role that provides the highest level of escalation for customer issues that are jeopardizing the Palo Alto Networks business relationship and/or sales opportunities with key customers. The Escalation Manager will lead and manage the resolution of customers' critical issues by forming and leading an interdepartmental, cross-functional, and geographically dispersed Palo Alto Networks virtual team which are formed based on the customer and escalation needs. In leading the virtual team, the escalations Manager will liaise with and work across various Palo Alto Networks functional organizations and business units, and with all levels of the company; from Support, Sales, Product management, and development engineers to management and corporate executives.

Requirements

10+ years of customer-facing sales and/or service delivery roles
Past experience as Escalations Engineer/Manager, Technical Account Management, Engineering Management, Customer Support Management, or similar roles desired
Customer centric attitude and focus on providing best-in-class service for customers and collaborators
Manage critical issues in a cross-functional environment that includes working with support, customer success, professional services, sales, customers, and partners to resolve complex and critical issues
Ability to multitask and prioritize with a goal of driving issues to closure on behalf of the customer
Familiarity with tools like Salesforce, Asana, Tableau, JIRA and experience in running and operating with the SLA/SLO/Milestones paradigm and clarity on what success and corresponding metrics looks like
Strong capacity for Influencing, negotiating, and delegating efforts
Ability to work in a fast-paced, challenging environment with global customers
Experience in being able to effectively lead and motivate a team of cross functional professionals
Expertise in communicating complex topics in a clear and concise manner to different tiers of audiences(highly technical, less technical, executives, practitioners)
Experience with Networking/Security Products
Knowledge of LAN/WAN technologies, encompassing general routing/switching/security for both branch and data center architectures
Ownership for driving progress and resolution of customers' critical issues
Engage and lead cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams in the development and execution of action plans to address critical situations
Effectively communicate critical issue status to executive staff, sales teams, and other invested parties
Creative thinking, adaptability, and versatility
Demonstrate strong judgment in risk management and problem mitigation, as well as making timely decisions from both business and technical perspectives
Strong ability to influence and effective at assigning tasks and responsibilities to successfully achieve all key objectives of the critical account
Identify systemic and pervasive issues related to products and/or processes and drive actions to prevent future issues

Responsibilities

Escalation Leadership Ownership for driving progress and resolution of customers' critical issues
Drive clear intake, scope, priority, exit criteria and end to end process to achieve streamlined escalation resolution
Drive global consistency across portfolio and customers
Maintain and improve procedures for customer and field personnel for escalation handling
Handle direct customer leadership and technical audiences as appropriate
Engage and lead cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams in the development and execution of action plans to address critical situations
Strong ability to influence and be effective at assigning tasks and responsibilities to successfully achieve all key objectives of the critical account and issues
Clear accountability on relevant owners on driving to target service-level Objectives(SLO) and intermediate milestones leading up to it
Interlock with Executive Sponsors to help resolve roadblocks in a timely manner
Effectively communicate critical issue status to executive staff, sales, support, product teams and other invested parties
Effective use of dashboards and keen understanding of how to use data to help deliver the outcomes needed and track progress towards SLO
Set clear customer expectations and ensure timely updates on troubleshooting and resolution action plans for internal and customer facing communications
Make informed decisions on elevating urgency and apply relevant focus to solve for a situation with right governance, guardrails and reviews in place
A “whatever it takes” customer-first attitude and a willingness to go the extra mile to foster customer success
Demonstrate strong judgment in risk management and problem mitigation, as well as making timely decisions from both business and technical perspectives
Retrospectives and PostMortem to help improve the process/system/product
Identify systemic and pervasive issues related to products and/or processes and drive actions to prevent future problems
Recognitions and reporting on problem areas which will give insight to the magnitude of the issue through the amount of cases or number of customers impacted or related to these areas
Understanding of techniques to predict risks using data and AI models and systematic approach to address
Co-create and pilot proactive programs to reduce likelihood of customer and field escalations