Manager, Escalations (United States)

The Community You Will Join: 

No global movement springs from individuals. It takes an entire team united behind something big. On the Delivery team at Airbnb, we’re proud to be at the forefront of the sharing economy. We recognize that we are the leaders of a new, worldwide phenomenon, and that’s why we’re working so hard to build the world’s most loyal travel community.

Together, our team provides support to more than 100 million lifetime guests and 3 million listings in over 191 countries. We are looking for an enthusiastic, dedicated leader who knows how to motivate and inspire teams in a cutting-edge and fast-paced environment. 

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.

The Manager supports CS services and is an operational leadership role that requires substantial experience in customer service and team management. Managers oversee teams of Customer Service agents and should have the ability to guide and uplevel their agents, 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.      

As part of this role, you are required to be flexible and may be required to move to different teams within Community Support and/or take up different responsibilities from those set out below. The ideal candidate will be open to a role which will evolve based on business needs and will be flexible to meet those needs.       

A Typical Day: 

The responsibilities listed below are not exhaustive. Given the fast-moving nature of this work, the responsibilities set out below may change and additional duties may be assigned as needed.

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 trainings
• For cases that involve internal stakeholders, guide agents 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 agent, 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 agent 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 agent 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 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:

• 10+ years experience in a customer service or operations, with 5+ years in a role directly managing a team
• 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, ability to tailor your feedback & communication style to meet the needs of your coachee or mentee
• Proficiency in various data analysis and reporting tools to track performance trends (tableau, SQL, Excel, Google Sheets, etc.)

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. 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 state where Airbnb, Inc. has a registered entity. Click here for the up-to-date list of excluded states. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is on the exclusion list  If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

Offices: Canada, United States