Technical Escalation Manager - IBM Power

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Your Role and Responsibilities

Technical Escalation Manager (TEM) formerly known as Resolution Technical Leader (RTL) are responsible for leading a critical situation resolution team consisting of IBM, subcontractor/vendor, and client resources. The TEM is responsible for the resolution of assigned customer satisfaction issues with products/services/offerings and employs specific processes and tools to plan, track, monitor and report resolution activities and progress.

Technical Escalation Manager manages the communication with key stakeholders at all levels of the business, internal to IBM and with the client, ensuring timely resolution status is provided to avoid panic and confusion.

Duties and Responsibilities :

• Able to effectively communicate Client's problem and Conditions of Satisfaction (CoS) to ensure that the technical aspects of the problem are clearly defined and understood by all engaged in the resolution.
• Works with the PEM, if assigned, and Support teams to develop action plans and engage appropriate resources to resolve the complaint.
• Owns and leads the technical resolution of the Managed Escalation cases.
• Manages resolution teams that cross multiple organizations/divisions in IBM so that complex situations involving more than one business unit are resolved in a parallel manner.
• Teams with the Project Escalation Managers (PEM), if assigned, and the team to ensure the scope of the situation is managed and that changes to the technical problem statement are communicated.
• Identify the most appropriate in brand technical resources required to resolve the technical problem and satisfy the Client's Condition of Satisfaction.
• Work to engage Cross brand resources, as required.
• Work to define and agree a communication plan covering status reporting and meeting management for both internal and external communications and meeting requirements.
• Ensure that the Managed Escalation case record is kept up to date at all times.
• Maintains a positive, professional working relationship with all parties who assist with problem resolution and reporting.
• Produce and communicate status updates as agreed with the PEM (if assigned) as defined in the communication plan for the situation.
• Schedule and facilitate meetings with the technical resolution team as required and represent the technical resolution team in meetings scheduled and facilitated by the PEM (if assigned).
• Manages ongoing escalation and involve appropriate IBM management for resolution where required.
• Understands and complies with the requirements of the Managed Escalation process as described in the Cognitive Support Platform (CSP) Playbook.
• Provides relevant feedback to appropriate IBM teams on Lessons Learned, improvement recommendations and process violations so as to foster improvement to prevent or minimize the impacts of these situations in the future.
• Disengagement could only take place when the TEM is no longer needed on the record.
• Takes necessary steps to close a MEC case when assigned as the Agent/Owner of the MEC Case.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Experienced working directly with external clients.
• Leadership and project management skills: each managed escalation is a mini project which needs to be carefully driven to bring client confidence back after an outage or an impacting issue
• Excellent communication english skills, including listening, facilitating, negotiating. Adapt communications and approaches to conclude negotiations with various partners, resulting in common agreements.
• General technical knowledge of server hardware and/or UNIX-based operating systems such as AIX or Linux and a general understanding of IT architecture. This person should not be deeply technical but needs to understand enough to "translate" for non-technical people.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Self-driven and autonomous as the Americas team is distribution across multiple locations in North America.
• Comfortable collaborating with remote teams and experience using virtual collaboration tools (Jabber, Slack, Webex, Trello, Mural, etc.)

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Problem solving, analytical thinking
• Highly motivated and not scared of challenging situations
• 5+ years in IT or working with IBM products and offerings.
• Capable of learning new skills and retaining knowledge.
• Knowledge of IBM support process and organization.

About Business Unit

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