Aimed at mid-level operations leaders who manage customer service teams handling sensitive safety issues in a fast-paced environment.
Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.
Original posting from Airbnb
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, Safety Support. The ideal candidate is hospitable, analytical, and committed to delivering the highest standards of service through coaching and up leveling their team. We are seeking someone who can hold their people accountable, performance manage effectively, and drive strong results against targets. This is a full time position based in Canada.
The Manager, Safety Support supports one or more internal CS services. The Manager, Safety Support is an operational leadership role that requires substantial experience in customer service and team management. The Manager, Safety Support oversees 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. Customer-first mindset — championing the Airbnb experience to ensure customers receive premium, 'best-in-class' support.
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). Comfort with direct, candid feedback and not shying away from difficult performance discussions
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.
Shadowing your people — regularly listening to/reviewing ambassador work firsthand to stay close to quality and coach effectively
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 the 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 of experience managing, coaching, and scaling large, customer teams in a fast-paced environment
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
A self-starter with the ability to thrive in ambiguity, make strategic decisions, and translate high-level strategies into granular execution
Ability to work weekend days, holidays, and on-call required
Your skills & expertise
Exceptional leadership and team management skills to manage a team of professionals - comfort with conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and handling employee/Talent issues
Demonstrated ability to shadow and coach direct reports through real-time observation' and 'track record of proactively improving service delivery and processes.
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
Customer-first mindset — championing the Airbnb experience to ensure customers receive premium, 'best-in-class' support.
Exceptional coaching skills, you have high EQ and know how to tailor your feedb
Source: Airbnb careers