High Touch Operations Manager

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced High Touch Operations Manager to act as the primary operational contact for key enterprise customers.

You will coordinate customer support activities, manage technical escalations and work closely with cross-functional technical teams to ensure issues are resolved promptly. This is a highly visible, customer-facing position requiring strong service-delivery, stakeholder-management and communication skills.

The successful candidate should possess a good understanding of networking technologies and be able to manage challenging customer situations professionally under pressure.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary point of contact for customer operational matters, technical issues and service escalations.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with customers, internal management and technical-support teams.
• Represent customer requirements and priorities to post-sales support teams and other relevant stakeholders.
• Monitor support cases, escalations, action items and service commitments to ensure timely resolution.
• Provide regular updates to customers regarding critical, high-priority or escalated incidents.
• Coordinate internal technical resources and cross-functional teams to address customer issues.
• Conduct weekly or bi-weekly operational review meetings with customers.
• Prepare and present service reports covering case status, service performance, recurring issues, risks and improvement actions.
• Conduct quarterly business or service reviews with customers and internal stakeholders.
• Analyse customer-support trends, service gaps and satisfaction levels, and recommend appropriate improvements.
• Educate customers on applicable support processes, procedures and escalation channels.
• Provide regular operational and service-status reports to management.
• Project-manage customer-facing initiatives and internal service-improvement activities.
• Track agreed actions and ensure all stakeholders meet their respective commitments.
• Travel to customer sites for quarterly service reviews or operational meetings when required.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Engineering, Business or a related discipline.
• At least 3-5 years of relevant experience in service delivery, technical account management, customer support operations or IT project management.
• Experience supporting enterprise customers in a technical or managed-services environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing technical support cases, major incidents and customer escalations.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills with the ability to coordinate and influence cross-functional teams.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, presentation and customer-management skills.
• Ability to remain composed and manage challenging customer situations under pressure.
• Good organisational and project-management capabilities, with strong attention to follow-up and delivery commitments.
• Working knowledge of service reporting, customer-satisfaction analysis and service-gap analysis.
• Basic understanding of enterprise networking technologies and solutions.
• CCNA certification or equivalent networking knowledge is preferred.
• ITIL certification or practical IT service-management experience is required.
• Familiarity with Cisco technologies, solutions and technical-support processes would be highly advantageous.
• Proficiency in reporting, presentation and project-tracking applications.

Preferred Experience

• Previous experience as a Service Delivery Manager, Technical Account Manager, Customer Operations Manager or Escalation Manager.
• Experience working for a technology vendor, telecommunications provider, systems integrator or managed-services provider.
• Experience conducting operational reviews and presenting service-performance reports to senior customer stakeholders.
• Understanding of SLA management, incident management, problem management and continual service improvement.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for a customer-focused professional who can take ownership of operational issues, coordinate technical teams and maintain customer confidence during critical situations. The ideal candidate combines service-management experience with sufficient technical understanding to communicate effectively with customers and engineers.