Manager, Premium Support

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The Difference You Will Make:

We are seeking a dedicated and enthusiastic candidate to provide exceptional Customer Service management to the Airbnb community as a Manager. The ideal candidate is hospitable, analytical, and committed to delivering the highest standards of service through coaching and upleveling their team. This is a full time position based in British Columbia, Canada.

The Manager supports one or more internal CS services. The Manager is an operational leadership role that requires substantial experience in customer service and team management. Managers oversee teams of approximately 10-15 ambassadors and should have the ability to guide and uplevel their ambassadors, demonstrating top-level customer service skills. Strong organizational skills and the ability to balance real-time and planned work are also required. They should also be adaptable and responsive in our fast paced environment, sometimes under pressure, while remaining flexible, proactive, resourceful, efficient and demonstrating a high level of professionalism and confidentiality.      

A Typical Day: 

Oversee a strong operational environment for your teams and ensure high quality support for the community from your team

Manage the team execution of complex, sensitive, and/or urgent issues that might pose a significant risk to our brand or community, including acting as the highest escalation point for case consults and high level escalations from other stakeholders

Meet with your direct reports regularly to review their work and provide high quality, behavior-based coaching; must be able to create a performance development strategy/plan for your service(s).

Provide best practices guidelines to your team on how to handle cases and situations, and ensure that ways of working are documented and followed.

Ensure that the team is consistently staffed appropriately and that staff complete onboarding and ongoing training.

For cases that involve internal stakeholders, guide ambassadors to take proper action to case closure and in rare cases, support with in-the-weeds case handling

Collaborate with Capacity Planning & WFP on setting minimum headcount, ensuring adequate coverage, contingency planning impacts of changes, and advocating for staffing needs vs. volume/work

Drive performance at the ambassador, team, and service level

Ensure individual team members are held accountable to performance goals in a fair and equitable manner by setting clear expectations, following-up individually, and coaching team members positively to develop and improve their skills in a tailored way

Manage both ambassador  and team performance, including identifying trends in performance, providing corrective actions and positive overall feedback, and writing year end reviews and improvement plans

Ability to set and articulate the vision and focus for the quarter; deliver that vision and focus through all hands-type meetings

Share input and recommendations about service target setting.

Provide oversight on the overall service performance and contribute to reporting on trends and providing a holistic picture of the service to the Delivery Director

Build and nurture an engaged and diverse team

Own and manage end-to-end people strategy and operations within your ambassador team to foster a high performing and sustainable team environment. This includes hiring, driving onboarding, talent development, and people engagement/wellness/morale

Enable team and individual professional success through supporting and challenging your team to meet and exceed expectations with clear goals/expectations, feedback, one-on-ones, and coaching

Support team in professional development within a team by finding and creating development opportunities and leveraging company-wide resources to regularly drive development within your team.

Keep up with day-to-day management duties such as time off approvals, team and one-on-one meetings, and managing Talent-related issues

Maintain a culture of openness, transparency and accountability allowing our teams to deliver their best work while being themselves 

Demonstrate strong leadership on important issues including Diversity & Belonging, Allyship, Ethics, Compliance and maintaining high standards of service to the company

Support strategic initiatives within Delivery and your service as needed

Lead the team toward the successful execution of company or other strategic changes or goals within your service by cascading updates and changes, communicating new requirements, and providing feedback

Support, as needed, internal Delivery performance & operations improvement projects, in collaboration with the Delivery Excellence team and cross-functional partners

Think critically and constantly evaluate our procedures. Collect feedback from the team to identify opportunities to improve performance and better optimize processes for the team, service, and global community

Your Expertise:

8+ years of progressive experience in a customer service or an operations role, with 5 years in a role directly managing staff & the employee lifecycle

Demonstrable experience in driving improved performance of teams as a line manager

Experience in the deployment of resources to manage real-time crisis situations, including managing high severity/sensitivity cases and decision-making authority for losses

Experience in data analysis and reporting to identify performance trends, as well as  developing and implementing performance management standards

Experience translating big picture goals and strategy into implementable and concrete actions for your teams, including setting operational or functional targets or performance goals 

Ability to work weekend days, holidays, and on-call required

Strong communicator, with fluency, in both written and spoken, English

Your skills and competencies:

Exceptional leadership and team management skills to manage a team of professionals - comfort with conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and handling employee/Talent issues

Strong communication skills to collaborate with different stakeholders and manage sensitive cases, while remaining calm and poised under pressure

Organized and resourceful; able to juggle and multi-task, with an attention to detail and follow through even in ambiguous situations

In-depth understanding of customer service operations and processes; able to translate that to your team

Strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities to evaluate procedures and identify opportunities for improvement

Ability to cascade with context and lead your team through changes

Exceptional coaching skills, you have high EQ and know how to tailor your feedback & communication style to meet the needs of your coachee or mentee

Cultural competency and a strong commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion within the team

Proficiency in various data analysis and reporting tools to track performance trends (tableau, SQL, Excel, Google Sheets, etc.)

Your Location:

This position is Remote Eligible - British Columbia, Canada. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a province where Airbnb Canada, Inc. has a registered entity. Currently we can hire in the following provinces: Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with your recruiter on what provinces you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belongi