Customer Experience & Escalation Manager

Role Purpose

The Customer Experience & Escalation Manager protects customer relationships when things go wrong. The role owns escalated customer issues, engages directly with customers to resolve problems quickly, rebuilds trust, and owns the Escalation process end-to-end — coordinating the internal response, communicating with affected customers, and driving root-cause resolution.

This person acts as a calm, senior point of contact when situations are complex, sensitive, or high-stakes, freeing Account Managers to focus on growth and day-to-day relationship management. The role also acts as a trusted extension of the COO, taking ownership of ad hoc strategic and operational projects as priorities arise.

Core Focus Areas

• Has ownership of escalated customer issues and at-risk customer relationships.

• Manage end-to-end escalation or incident coordination, communication, post-incident review, and corrective action tracking.

• Clear reporting to the COO on escalation trends, incident performance, customer sentiment, and systemic issues.

• Process, procedure and playbook development for customer experience, escalation response, and operational performance.

• Cross-functional performance improvement across customer-facing and operational teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the senior escalation point for customer issues that Account Managers are unable to resolve, or that require cross-functional intervention.

• Take direct ownership of escalated customer relationships, communicating transparently and confidently until resolution.

• Triage incoming escalations, assess severity and impact, and decide the right response path.

• Coordinate with Helpdesk, Technical Teams, and Account Management to resolve issues quickly.

• Maintain a clear log of escalations, root cause, and outcomes to identify recurring themes.

• Deal directly with customers on sensitive or high-risk issues, acting as a trusted, senior voice during difficult conversations.

• Rebuild confidence with at-risk accounts following service failures or major incidents.

• Provide clear, honest, and empathetic communication that balances customer needs with business realities.

• Own customer-facing communications during incidents, including status updates, expected resolution times, and post-incident summaries.

Reporting, Performance & Continuouse Improvement

• Report directly to the COO on escalation trends, major incident performance, and recurring systemic issues.

• Produce regular reporting on escalation volume, resolution times, incident frequency / impact, and customer sentiment.

• Identify patterns behind repeat escalations or incidents and recommend process, product or training changes to prevent recurrence.

• Partner with Account Management leadership to refine when and how issues should be escalated.

• Help set and track KPIs / SLAs for customer-facing and operational teams, flagging where performance is falling short.

• Run regular performance reviews / business reviews on the COO’s behalf, surfacing insights and holding teams accountable to agreed actions.

Process & Procedure Development

• Design, document and own end-to-end processes for customer experience and escalation management, including escalation criteria, severity definitions, response workflows and communication protocols.

• In conjunction with other department help build and maintain performance frameworks so KPI / SLA conversations are consistent and evidence-based across teams.

• Ensure processes are properly documented, version-controlled and easy for teams to follow under pressure, including playbooks, runbooks, escalation matrices and templates.

• Champion continuous improvement by treating every escalation, incident and performance review as an input for refining process.

COO Project Support

• Take on ad hoc strategic or operational projects as directed by the COO, spanning customer experience, operations or cross-functional initiatives.

• Act as a flexible senior resource who can pick-up unstructured or time-sensitive priorities with minimal oversight.

• Bring a structured, calm approach to short-term projects by scoping the problem, coordinating stakeholders and delivering outcomes.

Requirements

• 5+ years in customer success, account management, technical support or incident management, ideally in a B2B MSP or technology environment.

• Proven experience managing high-stakes customer conversations and de-escalating difficult situations.

• Exceptional communication skills — calm, clear and confident under pressure.

• Strong stakeholder management across technical and non-technical teams.

• Structured, methodical approach to problem-solving and incident coordination.

• Analytical mindset with the ability to spot patterns in escalation / incident data and turn them into recommendations.

• Strong process design and documentation skills, with a high degree of autonomy and trustworthiness.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with MSP management tools, Halo, Hudu etc.

• ITIL Foundation certification or equivalent.

• Experience building or refining escalation / incident playbooks from scratch.

• Works closely with Sales / Account Management, Technical support teams, the Leadership Team and other departments as required.

• Regular direct customer contact on escalated and incident-related matters.

• May lead or contribute to initiatives outside core customer experience / incident duties at the COO’s discretion.

Working Relationships

• Works closely with Sales / Account Management, Technical support teams, the Leadership Team and other departments as required.

• Regular direct customer contact on escalated and incident-related matters.

• May lead or contribute to initiatives outside core customer experience / incident duties at the COO’s discretion.

Benefits

• Competitive salary

• 23 days annual leave plus public holidays

• Life Assurance Scheme

• Hybrid Role

• Access to use of a company vehicle as required

• Opportunity to gain industry recognised qualifications

• Active sports and social club

• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

• Career progression

• Educational Assistance programme.