Customer Success Escalation Manager (Americas)

Introduction

At Apptio, an IBM Software business, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Your Role And Responsibilities

About the Role

The IBM Apptio Customer Success (CS) organization is focused on driving product adoption, retention, and growth in our customer base. This role is responsible for overseeing and resolving high-severity and complex customer issues that cannot be handled by frontline support teams. This role supports the coordination between customers, internal teams, and leadership stakeholders to not only ensure timely, effective, and empathetic resolution for our most strategic clients, but also to design, build, document, and scale repeatable playbooks and processes to mitigate similar/adjacent future risks. The Escalation Manager plays a key role in identifying patterns, improving processes, preventing future escalations, mitigating customer churn, and driving customer satisfaction.

Impact of the Role

The Escalation Manager plays a critical role in maintaining customer trust, improving technical services, building lifelong customers, and protecting the company’s reputation. By transforming challenging situations into opportunities for learning and improvement, this role directly contributes to customer satisfaction, retention, and operational excellence, while also creating or updating internal playbooks and best practices. The Escalation Manager will use these playbooks to train and guide our CS team members in best practices to reduce or mitigate these issues/risks in future.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary point of contact for high-priority and complex customer escalations, ensuring clear communication and timely resolution.
• Coordinate cross-functionally with IBM Apptio Architects, Customer Success, Engineering, Product Management, Sales, Support, Finance, and Executive Stakeholders to drive issue resolution.
• Take ownership of critical incidents, managing resolution strategies, and customer expectations throughout the escalation lifecycle.
• Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to escalations, SLAs, and customer satisfaction.
• Ensure compliance with company policies, SLAs, and confidentiality standards.
• Participate in after-hours critical escalations as needed.
• Document and continuously improve escalation policies, procedures, and best practices. This will include designing, building, documenting, and scaling of repeatable playbooks and processes to mitigate similar/adjacent future risks.
• Analyze escalation trends and root causes to recommend and implement long-term corrective actions.
• Document escalated cases, themes, outcomes, and resolution timelines; prepare metric reports with clear recommendations for stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Conduct post-incident reviews to capture lessons learned and recommend process or product improvements.
• Develop ‘best-practice’ playbooks as guidance for peers to action to prevent escalation of risks and issues.
• Build and manage program-based approach to issue resolution
• Present findings and learnings to key stakeholders internally
• Present ongoing status updates and post-mortem findings to internal and external client stakeholders
• Develop and train staff on de-escalation techniques and escalation readiness and report quantifiable outcomes.
  
  

Core Competencies

• Customer-centric mindset with strong empathy and relationship management skills
• Collaborative leadership and influence without direct authority
• High attention to detail and commitment to documentation quality
• Strategic thinker focused on long-term solutions and continuous improvement
• Strong ethical standards and commitment to confidentiality
  
  

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• 2 years minimum experience in project or program management delivering measurable business outcomes
• Foundational understanding of IT concepts, including cloud computing, servers, storage, networking, and open-source technologies
• Demonstrated ownership of deliverables from planning through execution and closeout
• Experience supporting end-to-end project delivery aligned to KPIs, customer outcomes, and defined success criteria
• Experience working in SaaS, cloud, or software development environments
• Demonstrated ability to identify process improvement opportunities and drive operational efficiency and continuous improvement
• Experience with project management and collaboration tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Asana, Smartsheet, monday.com, etc.)
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• 5 years' experience in customer success, customer support, technical support, or service delivery.
• 2 years' experience in escalation management, incident management, or a supervisory/lead role.
• Prior experience with IBM Apptio suite of products (Apptio, Cloudability, Kubecost, TargetProcess)
• Experience operating in Agile or Scrum environments with iterative delivery and continuous planning
• Exposure to Lean, Kanban, or Design Thinking methodologies
• Certifications such as ITIL, PMP, LPM, SAFe, AWS/Azure/GCP, or similar.
• Foundational knowledge of AI
• Strong grasp of project management fundamentals, including scope, schedule, risk, dependency, and change control
• Working knowledge of risk, issue, dependency, and resource management with ability to proactively identify and mitigate impacts
• Proven ability to manage high-pressure situations with composure and professionalism.
• Experience coordinating with cross-functional teams, vendors, and subcontractors, including managing communication and execution plans
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex issues to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with CRM and ticketing systems such as Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, or Jira.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills; ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.