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AppZen, Inc.

Posted 4 months ago

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Escalation Manager

RemoteRemoteFull-time

AI Summary

Escalation Manager leads high-severity customer escalations for AppZen, coordinating across Support, Engineering, Product, and executive teams to deliver timely, durable outcomes while protecting customer confidence.

About this role

AppZen is the leader in autonomous spend-to-pay software. Its patented artificial intelligence accurately and efficiently processes information from thousands of data sources so that organizations can better understand enterprise spend at scale to make smarter business decisions. It seamlessly integrates with existing accounts payable, expense, and card workflows to read, understand, and make real-time decisions based on your unique spend profile, leading to faster processing times and fewer instances of fraud or wasteful spend. Global enterprises, including one-third of the Fortune 500, use AppZen’s invoice, expense, and card transaction solutions to replace manual finance processes and accelerate the speed and agility of their businesses.
At AppZen, we value candidates who are actively using AI tools to enhance productivity, automate repetitive tasks, and solve problems more efficiently. Across all roles, we are looking for team members who leverage AI in meaningful ways to drive impact in their work.
To learn more, visit us at www.appzen.com.

The US-Based Escalation Manager is a senior, customer-facing leader responsible for driving resolution of AppZen’s most complex and high-impact customer escalations. You will partner with CSMs and ISMs to unblock go-lives, stabilize at-risk accounts, and protect customer confidence—coordinating across Support, Engineering, Product, and the AppZen Executive Team to deliver timely, durable outcomes.
This role is Remote/Hybrid (U.S.-based), aligned to U.S. business hours, with flexibility to support critical incidents when needed.

Escalation Ownership & Incident Leadership

  • Own high-severity escalations (go-live blockers, production incidents, at-risk accounts) end-to-end: triage → containment → root cause → corrective actions → customer updates → post-incident review.
  • Lead escalation war rooms through structured triage, clear ownership, defined ETAs, and documented decisions.
  • Deliver crisp, executive-ready status updates including impact, risks, mitigation, and next steps.

    • Cross-Functional Partnership & Executive Stakeholder Management

  • Act as the central point of coordination for escalations, driving alignment, accountability, and resolution across teams.
  • Partner closely with Support Leadership / Support Engineering to improve escalation rigor and incident response consistency.
  • Partner with Implementation (ISMs) and Customer Success/Account Management to remove blockers, stabilize at-risk accounts, and reduce renewal risk.
  • Support executive customer engagements with the AppZen Executive Team, including escalation reviews and incident briefings.
  • Build trusted relationships with customer executives and key stakeholders, ensuring transparency and confidence throughout the escalation lifecycle.
  • Engage Engineering and Product Management to prioritize high-impact issues and drive resolution informed by escalation trends.

    • Proactive Account Health & Risk Reduction

  • Monitor escalated accounts for recurring issues and systemic risks; identify early warning indicators and drive preventive actions.
  • Track and report trends impacting customer health and product reliability; report product issues and recommend operational/process improvements.

    • Knowledge & Process Improvement

  • Create and maintain escalation runbooks, playbooks, and knowledge content that improve speed, quality, and consistency.
  • Strengthen internal operating rhythms for escalations (templates, comms standards, handoffs, and post-incident learnings).

    • Must-Have Qualifications

  • U.S. citizenship (required) to support certain customer environments.
  • 10+ years in SaaS across escalation management, support leadership, incident management, or customer success escalations.
  • Strong executive presence and customer communication—able to drive clarity under pressure with internal leaders and customer stakeholders.
  • Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity and deliver outcomes with accountability.
  • Experience with support/engineering workflow tools such as Zendesk and Jira (or equivalent).

    • Preferred Background (Technical + Finance Domain)

  • A strong foundation in SaaS fundamentals, engineering concepts, and structured troubleshooting, combined with familiarity with finance operations, will accelerate ramp and increase impact in this role.
  • Apply structured triage across workflows, integrations, and environments; frame issues clearly with evidence and the right diagnostic questions.
  • Communicate effectively with Engineering/Product using shared technical language—aligning on impact, ownership, and next steps.
  • Finance domain knowledge in Accounts Payable and Expense Audit / corporate card workflows.
  • Familiarity with customer health frameworks, renewal-risk mitigation, and escalation governance.
  • Experience turning escalation trends into actionable product feedback and operational/process improvements.

    • Skills

    Communication With Engineering/product TeamsCross-functional LeadershipCustomer Success EscalationsData-driven ReportingException HandlingExecutive CommunicationIncident ManagementJiraOperational Process ImprovementsPlaybooksPost-Incident ReviewRisk MonitoringRoot-cause AnalysisRunbooksStakeholder ManagementSupport Engineering CollaborationThreshold-based EscalationTriageZendesk

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