Program Manager, Escalation Management

Overview

We are seeking a Program Manager to orchestrate how Instacart responds to its most critical escalations, including executive-raised issues and issues from our most strategic retail partners. When something is urgent, ambiguous, and spans multiple teams, you bring clarity, drive resolution, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. This role reports to the Senior Manager of Customer Experience.

You’ll be responsible for moving our model from reactive to proactive. That means defining the risk signals that trigger early intervention, building recovery paths for known risk vectors, and turning recurring issues into data-backed product change requests. This is a strategic and analytical role for a resourceful professional with strong judgment under pressure. It is critical for building a scalable escalation process that earns the trust of internal stakeholders and key retail partners.

The Customer Experience team ensures that critical issues affecting our retailers, customers, and shoppers are resolved quickly and permanently. The team operates globally across a network of BPO partners and works closely with Product, Engineering, Operations, and Business Development to provide immediate resolution and address systemic root cause issues.

About the Job

Program Operations & SLA Governance

• Run the escalation operating rhythm end to end: daily case review, weekly escalation review, monthly business review, and quarterly calibration of severity criteria.
• Keep meeting hygiene tight: agendas, decisions logged, and action items assigned with named owners and due dates.
• Manage a central tracker that captures every escalation signal and root-cause action and routes each to a named owner.
• Publish and drive SLAs, and report adherence, escalation cycle time, and signal-to-action lag to leadership weekly. [Targets to be set]

Proactive Service Recovery

• Define and maintain risk-detection signals that support early intervention.
• Design recovery paths for known risk vectors, so issues are resolved before users have to escalate.

Root-Cause & Program Delivery

• Identify and size the frequency and impact of patterns across escalations, and turn them into effective solutions that reduce repeat issues.
• Drive cross-functional execution with Product, Engineering, Operations, and the rest of Customer Experience so every signal has a destination, every action has an owner, and every outcome is measured.

Data, Analytics & Reporting

• Write SQL queries to investigate spikes, isolate root causes, and answer ad-hoc questions from CX, Product, and Operations leaders.
• Build and maintain dashboards and automated reporting tracking escalation volume, time to resolution, recurring themes, SLA adherence, and partner impact.
• Prepare leaders for key partner meetings, business reviews, and incident readouts with clear, quantified impact.

Process & Playbook

• Define and improve escalation intake, severity criteria, SLAs, and communication standards.
• Build repeatable processes that scale beyond the team.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• [5+] years of program or escalation management experience, preferably in customer experience, contact center, or partner operations.
• Proven ability to run cross-functional programs with named owners, published service-level agreements, and measurable outcomes, without direct authority in fast-moving, high-pressure situations.
• Hands-on analytical skills, including strong SQL and experience with visualization tools (e.g., Looker, Mode, Tableau, or similar) to find patterns and prioritize.
• Understanding of contact center metrics (e.g., Consumer Sentiment, first contact resolution, average handle time, Internal Quality Score) and the operational levers that move them.
• Ability to identify the root causes behind changes in key metrics and recommend a mitigation strategy.
• Track record of building reporting that an executive audience actually uses to make decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to synthesize complex topics into a compelling narrative for executives and external partners.
• Sound judgment on what to escalate, to whom, and when, and the ability to navigate ambiguity and shifting priorities, including direct conversations with upset customers, shoppers, and partners.
• Strategic mindset: able to think ahead of where the program is today and help stand up a new operating model rather than maintain an established one.
• High accountability and ownership, with a driven, self-starter approach.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience writing product feedback or change requests that Product teams accepted and shipped.
• Experience building or scaling an escalation or incident-management process.
• Experience with de-escalation strategies, including customer relationship management.
• Experience with retail, grocery, e-commerce, or marketplace partners.
• Familiarity with tools like Salesforce, JIRA, Slack, etc.
• Highly collaborative, with a track record of building trust across teams and a desire to help others learn.