Customer Success Unit Leader

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Role Purpose

Lead the Customer Success Unit (CSU) strategy for the subsidiary, ensuring customers realize business outcomes through Microsoft Cloud solutions. This role drives customer success at scale, orchestrates internal and partner resources, and fosters operational excellence.

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Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership

• Serve as the executive-level orchestrator for customer success.

• Influence C-suite decisions to accelerate adoption and value realization.

• Customer Success Planning

• Develop success plans and customer journey maps aligned with Enterprise priorities.

• Ensure global standards and subsidiary execution consistency.

• Partner Ecosystem Engagement

• Leverage partner networks to deliver integrated solutions.

• Collaborate with One Commercial Partner for joint success motions.

• Operational Excellence

• Drive Rhythm of Business (ROB) processes for CSU.

• Ensure forecasting accuracy and operational efficiency.

• Team Leadership

• Coach and manage Customer Success professionals.

• Foster a culture of accountability and growth.

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Core Competencies

• Executive Influence & Strategic Thinking

• Customer Success Orchestration

• Partner Engagement & Ecosystem Management

• Operational Discipline & Forecasting

• Leadership & Talent Development

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Impact Indicators

• Exceptional Impact: Influences strategic decisions at C-suite level; drives measurable business outcomes.

• Significant Impact: Ensures operational consistency and partner alignment across markets.

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KPIs

• Customer Satisfaction & Net Promoter Score (NPS)

• Consumption Growth across Microsoft Cloud

• Partner-led Success Motions

• Forecast Accuracy & ROB Compliance

• Employee Engagement & Development Metrics

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Engineering, Technology, or related field AND 8+ years related work experience (e.g., consulting, pre-sales/post-sales, business analysis, technical sales, technology solutions, change management, line-of-business leadership)

• OR Master's Degree in Business, Engineering, Technology, or related field AND 6+ years related work experience (e.g., consulting, pre-sales/post-sales, business analysis, technical sales, technology solutions, change management, line-of-business leadership)

• OR equivalent experience.

• 4+ years people management experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Engineering, Technology, or related field AND 12+ years related work experience (e.g., consulting, pre-sales/post-sales, business analysis, technical sales, technology solutions, solution architecture, change management, line-of-business leadership)

• OR Master's Degree in Business, Engineering, Technology, or related field AND 10+ years related work experience (e.g., consulting, pre-sales/post-sales, business analysis, technical sales, technology solutions, solution architecture, change management, line-of-business leadership)

• 2+ years experience managing people managers.

• 4+ years experience in change management and/or technology adoption.

People Management

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.

• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.

• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.

• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Understanding the Customer

• Fosters alignment with internal teams on customer's business priorities, within and across solution areas. Takes ownership in understanding customer business, needs, and strategy across all aligned accounts, leveraging broad influence of market and representing Microsoft at the industry level. Gains insight and credibility as a trusted partner by influencing customers, providing thought leadership, and partnering with the customer to better understand their needs and digital transformation priorities. Leverages an external perspective with customers, bringing in insights from previous customer experiences. Anticipates market direction around technology to ensure team is equipped with the appropriate capabilities. Coaches teams to develop and leverage understanding of customer business and industry. Guides building and/or expansion of stakeholder map, as needed.

Driving Business Value Realization

• Drives best practices and innovation in delivery of customer success plans to optimize customer value across accounts and stay aligned with strategic vision. Provides data-driven recommendations in defining success measures and promotes long-term customer success strategy with team. Coaches team to build customer success plans and utilizes them to build account team plan, leveraging own expertise and hands-on experiences (e.g., success plan workshops). Aligns multiple engagement plans and leverages corporate resources dedicated to awareness improvement of high potentials (e.g., Skills Learning platform). Facilitates cross-team and business unit collaboration (e.g., with Engineering, Partners, Cloud Solution Architects) to accelerate business value realization and ensure progress reporting. Facilitates team connections with technical and sales experts to drive business value realization. Leads team to cultivate successful customer outcomes as references/case studies in order to accelerate the velocity of all current and future customers.

Driving Consumption

• Manages teamwork with business development managers (BDMs) and key stakeholders to execute actions outlined in the Customer Success Plan. Ensures teams are using change management principles to be able to drive change management effectively. Ensures accountability for resolving consumption blockers by galvanizing resources and solutions, as required. Identifies widespread or global patterns in blockers and success factors and develops effective execution strategies to resolve and prevent them in the future. Coaches teams on best practices for handling escalations. Provides insight to de-escalate risks in customer compete scenarios. Works across teams to seek out and leverage Microsoft insights that strengthen and fuel new commercial growth and consumption.

Guiding Customer Success Strategy

• Acts as a strategic partner to executive-level business and technical decision makers (e.g., Chief Executive-level). Drives action and influences decision makers to accelerate the customer. Challenges customer on their course of action and elicits action to accelerate time to value. Leverages expertise in relationship building and influencing to mentor team in building strategic partnerships. Communicates standards for leveraging Customer Sucess Unit (CSU) solution Area engagement frameworks to guide customer success strategy, create customer journey map, and produce customer success plan (e.g., dynamic journey to success).

Partner Engagement

• Leverages partner network to create influence and connect the partners’ ecosystem and/or services to deliver business outcomes. Collaborates with internal teams (e.g., One Commercial Partner) to develop more strategic and updated offerings that support plays. Guides and coaches team in leveraging partner network for influence. Influences the development and landing of cross-solution consumption motions with partners.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Leads and optimizes dynamic, cross-functional internal teams (e.g., FastTrack, One Commercial Partner) to drive business outcomes, enable execution of customer success through One Microsoft, and inform programmatic improvements. Leads rhythms of business (ROBs) and oversees processes to ensure efficiency. Aligns processes (e.g., forecasting) with other cross-functional internal teams within the Enterprise Operating Unit (e.g., Account Team Unit, Specialist Team Unit, Services, One Commercial Partner, Business Group). Orchestrates across subsidiary to drive consistency in approach on global basis for early-in-career team member experience. Oversees team's collaboration on joint solution identification with key stakeholders in other solution areas to increase relevance, support execution, and drive customer business value.

Operational and Execution Excellence

• Provides support for teams in maintaining operational excellence and customer health and ensuring consumption process compliance by coaching the team to leverage key tools, programs, and insights, orchestrating consumption rhythm of business (ROB) for the Operating Unit (OU), and reporting to Leadership on insights. Drives maintenance of governance processes. Leads ROB and reports on overall health across territories within the OU, interpreting and providing data-driven insights focused on the business unit. Drives operational excellence by promoting content sharing and knowledge building across teams and providing clarity to the team. Develops and drives best practices to optimize execution across customers. Drives accountability in execution by providing coaching, ensuring use of tools, engaging in follow-up activities, overseeing processes, and offering guidance on maintaining engagement and pipeline hygiene. Contributes thought leadership to improve operational excellence initiatives. Leads teams to leverage standard tools and assess or help to develop novel tools to ensure accurate engagement hygiene. Optimizes team resources across engagements. Oversees updates provided to senior account and regional stakeholders on customers' transformation initiatives.

Customer Trust and Advocacy

• Enables and empowers teams to act as the voice of the customer (VOC) and partner by championing feedback around technical capabilities, blockers, and insights and driving the resolution of existing items. Represents the customer to internal teams (e.g., Engineering) as an escalation point to shape strategy by providing insights across territories. Uses broad patterns of feedback to develop strategic and actionable insights and presents a compelling business case to program managers that influences product roadmaps and decision making. Enables and empowers teams to identify gaps and take ownership in driving action based on feedback and advocating on the customer's behalf to drive resolution. Drives strategy for positive change within Microsoft. Brings in advocates to showcase high-impact successes as references (e.g., large customers, high profile). Creates a culture of advocacy within teams to champion advocacy internally and represent the industry externally. Empowers teams to establish trusted-advisor status by building trust with the customer/partner and drives and builds trust with executive and senior customers/partners. Oversees efforts to establish and drives executive sponsorship within customer/partner organizations and in Microsoft to support customer's success and digital transformation journey.

Community Involvement

• Empowers and coaches teams to develop strategy for building, maintaining, and leveraging customer and partner networks, initiating and developing new communities/events as needed (e.g., leads executive roundtable, develops user groups, holds industry events) to drive partner enablement and scale. Actively participates as a leader in the global community by contributing to the broader industry through blogs, whitepapers, events, articles, etc. Shadows and is shadowed by Customer Success Managers (CSMs) on new workshops. Collaborates in iterating engagement frameworks, new initiatives, programs, and workshops. Champions programs and represents their region in regional and global virtual teams to progress execution and impact. Shares success stories and best practices across communities and provides feedback and insights into the playbook for optimization.

Technical Development

• Proactively provides mentorship and coaching to team members and leaders by sharing expertise to drive team, subsidiary, and regional capabilities. Enables and empowers team to utilize and optimize development opportunities (e.g., mentorships, role-based resources, training participation, internal events such as Ready, Ignite) and leverage network to build technical capability. Fosters a culture of professional development to drive continuous learning of Customer Success discipline expertise, including product and required technical skills. Works across teams and organizational units to ensure and champion continuous updates of business process knowledge in relevant industries, as well as functional knowledge of workload.

Specialty Responsibility

• Motivates teams and provides expert guidance to engage with the customer to drive all intent, use cases, and business value scenarios, through envisioning as appropriate. Offers expert guidance to teams to prioritize and leverage top key performance indicators (KPIs) to drive prioritization of high-impact business outcomes. Proactively engages other managers to improve collaboration across solution areas to develop holistic plans aligned to customer consumption priorities. Serves as a sought-after resource and trusted advisor for customer. Coaches teams to actively listen to and respectfully challenge customers when appropriate on their decisions and/or areas where they could drive more value from solutions purchased. Coaches teams to secure executive sponsorship and build on network and industry experience to connect customers/partners with ideas, people, and resources that help orchestrate alignment.*

Other

• Embody our culture and values