Manager, Customer Escalations

About the Opportunity
The organization is seeking a Manager, Customer Escalations for a full-time role based in the United States.
This is a hands-on, customer-facing leadership role responsible for the Customer Escalations function and handling complex, sensitive, and high-impact customer experiences. The leader will oversee a team of specialists focused on taking ownership of challenging customer situations and driving them to resolution. In addition to guiding the team, this role personally engages with customers when management-level involvement is needed to restore confidence, navigate ambiguity, and coordinate cross-functional teams to resolve issues.
Beyond resolving individual escalations, this role uses key learnings to identify recurring customer friction, uncover systemic issues, and drive meaningful operational improvements across the customer journey. Success requires navigating direct customer conversations, people leadership, operational problem-solving, and cross-functional influence.
Key Responsibilities
Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team responsible for complex and high-visibility customer escalations.
Own the strategy, operating standards, performance, and continued development of the Customer Escalations function.
Serve as a senior escalation point for sensitive, complex, or business-critical customer situations.
Personally engage with customers in high-impact situations, taking ownership of difficult conversations and coordinating resolution across internal teams.
Foster a voice-first culture, prioritizing direct customer engagement when urgency, complexity, or trust requires it.
Establish scalable processes for managing escalations originating from executive leadership, social media, online reviews, community channels, and other non-standard paths.
Collaborate across Frontline Support, Escalations, Premium Support, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, Billing, RevOps, and related functions to identify and address customer friction across the broader customer journey.
Translate customer insights into actionable recommendations and operational improvements.
Partner with cross-functional teams to solve complex customer challenges and improve handoffs and cross-functional workflows.
Influence internal teams to address recurring friction, clarify ownership, resolve broken handoffs, and implement changes that reduce repeat escalations.
Lead targeted initiatives addressing recurring customer friction and measure whether operational changes meaningfully improve customer outcomes.
Leverage data, automation, tooling, and process enhancements to increase the scalability and effectiveness of the escalation and advocacy function.
Required Qualifications
8+ years of progressive experience in Customer Support, Customer Experience, Customer Success, Escalations, or a related customer-facing technology function, including meaningful leadership experience.
Demonstrated success working in a high-growth SaaS or technology environment.
Experience leading high-performing customer-facing professionals and owning or materially influencing a customer-facing function or program.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including confidence engaging directly with customers, business owners, executives, and senior internal stakeholders.
Strong business judgment and proven experience navigating complex or high-risk customer situations.
Demonstrated ability to identify patterns, diagnose root causes, and turn customer insights into operational improvements.
Proven ability to influence and drive change across cross-functional teams without direct authority.
Strong analytical skills and comfort using data to prioritize problems and measure outcomes.
Ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments and move fluidly between strategic thinking and hands-on execution.
Strong technical curiosity and the ability to develop deep proficiency in complex SaaS products and customer use cases.
Excellent prioritization skills with a strong bias toward action and ownership.
Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
Compensation and Details
Role Title: Manager, Customer Escalations
Employment Type: Full time
Location: United States
Base Salary: $74,000 - $95,000 USD annually
Equal Opportunity Employer
The organization is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an employer subject to affirmative action regulations, demographic information may be voluntarily requested solely for compliance with government recordkeeping, reporting, and other legal requirements. Providing this information is entirely voluntary and refusal to do so will not affect application status. Demographic data is kept separate from application materials and is not used in hiring decisions.

Work arrangement
Yes