Cornerstone is building a more connected, proactive Customer Organization designed to help customers realize value faster and navigate complexity with confidence. As part of that evolution, we are establishing a dedicated Critical Account Programs capability to change how we manage our most complex, high-impact customer situations.
The Senior Manager, Critical Account Programs will build this capability from the ground up and operate it in practice. You will own the situations that matter most: the largest, heaviest, cross-functional customer problems where our own Executive Leadership Team needs a single leader to coordinate the company's response. When a strategic account is at risk and the path forward spans Sales, Services, Product, Partners, Support, and Customer Success, this is the person who brings structure, drives resolution, and gives leadership a clear line of sight into what is happening and what we are doing about it.
This is not a role for someone looking to inherit an established program. We are looking for a builder and operator who can bring structure to ambiguity, create momentum across organizational boundaries, and remain calm and decisive when the stakes are high. You will define what constitutes a Critical Account situation at Cornerstone, establish the operating model and governance, and personally lead our highest-priority situations while the function matures.
In this role you will...
- 1. Build the Critical Account Programs operating model
- Define Cornerstone's end-to-end framework for managing the highest-impact, cross-functional customer situations, including qualification criteria, severity levels, entry and exit requirements, escalation paths, decision rights, and roles.
- Build repeatable mechanisms for intake, prioritization, ownership, action tracking, communication, and closure.
- Establish how Critical Account Programs connects with existing customer, product, support, and executive escalation processes so situations are surfaced early and routed to the right owner.
- Continuously evolve the model based on what we learn.
- Lead Cornerstone's most complex customer situations
- Serve as the single point of accountability for the overall outcome of situations involving significant customer, retention, financial, operational, or reputational risk that span more than one function.
- Rapidly assess customer impact, urgency, and business risk, and establish the right cross-functional response across Sales, Services, Product, Partners, Support, and Customer Success.
- Marshal company-wide resources, align stakeholders around clear ownership, decisions, timelines, and actions, and identify where leadership intervention or executive decisions are required.
- Drive situations through stabilization, resolution, and closure, remaining hands-on particularly as the capability is being established.
- Communicate with, and manage up to, internal executives and customers
- Expert-level communication is central to this role. This leader must be equally strong at managing up to Cornerstone's senior leaders and at leading high-stakes communication with customers.
- Manage up to the ELT with confidence and clarity: give our senior leaders a candid, objective view of impact, progress, risks, decisions needed, and recovery plans, and prepare executive-level readouts and recommendations that support fast, informed decisions.
- Anticipate what leadership needs to know before they ask, translate complex technical and operational detail into concise executive narratives, and keep leaders appropriately engaged without over-escalating.
- Lead customer-facing communications during critical situations: partner with account teams and, where needed, personally lead executive-level communication with customers so they experience Cornerstone as coordinated, transparent, and accountable.
- Establish the communication discipline, cadence, and standards that the broader organization can rely on during high-stakes situations.
- Turn situations into systemic improvement
- Lead post-situation reviews to identify root causes, contributing factors, and breakdowns in process, ownership, or execution.
- Translate findings into corrective actions with clear accountability and follow-through, and route product-rooted patterns to the appropriate product and support teams.
- Identify recurring patterns across customers, products, implementations, and internal handoffs, and partner with leaders across the business to prevent recurrence. This prevention and systemic improvement work is among the most valuable aspects of the role.
- Design a capability built to scale
- Design for scale and repeatability while preserving the judgment required for complex customer situations.
- Challenge traditional escalation models and identify where new operating approaches, technology, and automation can improve outcomes.
- Develop a strong point of view on how AI should transform situation management, including risk detection, situational awareness, decision support, coordination, and proactive intervention.
- Build the playbooks, tooling, governance, and readiness mechanisms required to scale, and shape the future function, including the roles and capacity required as it grows.
- SrDrive accountability: establish ownership, challenge stalled progress, and escalate thoughtfully when needed.
- Build while operating: solve today's customer problem while improving the system used to solve tomorrow's.
- Balance customer and enterprise needs: advocate for the customer while considering commercial, product, operational, and business realities.
You’ve got what it takes if you’ve got…
- 10+ years of experience in customer escalations, critical account or program management, customer success, technical program management, services, or a comparable enterprise environment.
- Experience building systems & processes to improve customer experience
- Experience personally leading complex, executive-visible customer situations involving technical and business stakeholders.
- Exceptional executive communication skills, including a proven ability to manage up to senior leadership and lead executive-level communication with customers under pressure.
- A track record of bringing structure and momentum to ambiguous, cross-functional problems.
- Experience partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Services, and Support, with enough technical fluency to navigate complex issues and translate across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience turning root-cause findings into durable process or operating-model improvements.
- Strong judgment, organizational discipline, and the ability to remain calm and action-oriented under pressure.
- The ability to influence outcomes without relying on direct authority.
- A builder mindset and curiosity to deeply understand our customers, products, and organization.
- A clear point of view on how AI, automation, and new operating models can reinvent situation management and move organizations from reactive response toward earlier detection, faster decisions, and scalable intervention.
What success looks like
In the first 12 to 18 months, this leader will have:
- Established a trusted Critical Account Programs operating model used consistently across Cornerstone.
- Improved the speed, coordination, and quality of response for the company's highest-risk cross-functional customer situations.
- Created clearer ownership, decision paths, and executive engagement during situations, with the ELT confident they have a single leader accountable for the response.
- Built mechanisms that turn situations into systemic product and operational improvements.
- Increased Cornerstone's ability to identify and mitigate customer risk earlier.
- Created the foundation, tooling, and organizational model required to scale the capability beyond a single leader.
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