Strategic Business Operations Lead, WW Community Support

The Community You Will Join: 

The Community Support org handles tens of millions of interactions yearly, engaging with one in five Airbnb customers by phone, messaging, chat, or social media channels. The group handles hundreds of issues across categories including Cancellations, Account Issues, Refunds, Payments, Reservations, Extenuating Circumstances, Booking & Listing issues, Safety & Claims. The organization is globally distributed with offices in San Francisco, Dublin, Montreal, Seattle, Singapore, Manila, Gurgaon and an extensive partner network serving all regions.

The Difference You Will Make:

We are looking for a  Sr. BizOps Lead to be part of our global CS Business Operations team. This role will be critical for overseeing the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the contact center operations contributing to the success of the organization’s operations as a whole. This lead will be responsible for strategic operations oversight of day-to-day operations, operational process improvement initiatives, operational budget management, and the implementation of best practices to drive operational excellence, improve operational efficiency, scalability and customer experience.

A Typical Day: 

Operational Performance Management: 

• Oversee the business operations of the global contact center, ensuring that it meets the business performance standards and targets (i.e. service levels, efficiency, customer satisfaction, cost etc.)
• Develop and drive the business performance management system across the CS organization. Own the recurring business review framework and operational management system on a recurring basis - WBR, QBR, etc. with the intent to drive standardization and operational excellence across the organization
• Build and foster a robust, transparent and cooperative synergy across departments by aligning contact center goals and initiatives with broader organizational objectives.
• Monitor key business performance indicators (KPIs) and work with the cross functional teams to develop actions plans based on data-driven analysis to optimize business performance. Be the business thought leader on how to measure the business in new ways in partnership with analytics. 
• Partner with CS analytics to design the right operational dashboards to monitor the various planning and operations teams. Use data backed insights and recommendations to improve the quality  of the operations at the same time as achieving the cost targets.

Operational Business Planning:

• Serve as the primary liaison with finance for all matters pertaining to the CS operational fiscal plan budget. Be able to make tradeoffs and understand the drivers of CS economics across both Airbnb and the partner models.  
• Drive the annual business planning process and work with finance to build the operating budget. 
• Build the process for driving the overall Operational Efficiencies targets and work with the cross-functional CS and finance teams to properly track the adherence to the efficiencies budget.
• Drive all ROI, budget management in partnership with Finance, roadmaps, LT planning needs for the CS organization and serve as a strategic thought leader for all business cases ROI needs related to the annual planning process.

Business Expense Management 

• Own budget and spend policy operations, developing strategies for spend allocation and operationalizing the achievement of targets set by Finance.
• Own all invoice management and fiscal adherence to commercial contracts. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to streamline invoicing procedures and optimize financial operations.
• Develop comprehensive business cases for proposed initiatives, conducting sensitivity analysis to assess potential risks and rewards. Work closely with the Customer Support Analytics (CSA) team to gather and analyze data required for business cases, ensuring data-driven decision-making.

Strategic Business Optimization and Operational Excellence: 

• Design the labor framework for deciding the global CS  labor footprint across internal and external sites by determining the optimal network ratios.  In addition, leverage best practices and provide thought leadership to help optimize labor across various business units in the broader Global Ops organization as needed.  
• Own the ramp and ramp down operational readiness process for the CS operations and act as a liaison between different CS departments to ensure that all areas of the operations are coordinated effectively to meet key milestones (i.e. ramp up for peak, ramp down, key launches, etc,).
• Deep focus on contact center business service design optimization efforts and identify and implement improvements to streamline workflows to drive business outcomes to quality (i.e. combining labor tiers, reduce wait times, optimize cost, and enhance overall efficiency, ramp and ramp down).  
• Participates in multi functional initiatives, designing and executing on large scale operational programs across the CS network in partnership with other relevant CS teams.

Your Expertise:

• 10+ years experience in business operations or operations management roles, preferably supporting large scale organizations that are global in nature with a proven track record of leading/driving results. Operations, Management Consulting or Financial/analytics background preferred.
• Must have deep functional domain expertise and knowledge in contact center operations and best practices. Understanding of contracts and commercial frameworks is a plus.
• Experience with process design and optimization, strategic operations and customer support strategies. Strong strategic thinking skills with the ability to understand how the key drivers of our business relate to each other, and how your actions and decisions impact Airbnb. 
• Works effectively in a global fast-paced environment with the ability to solve problems while managing multiple priorities .
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a proven track record for using data to  develop and implement strategic initiatives and drive key business decisions. Experience using SQL, Python and/or Tableau is required.
• Is able to anticipate business and industry issues as a basis for recommending large scale product, process or service improvements.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence at all levels. Exceptional influencing skills with the ability to help structure management decision making in areas of important business impact.
• Experience solving unique, complex, and often ambiguous problems with broad impact on the business; requires conceptual and innovative thinking to develop solutions.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication and presentation skills; able to articulate a vision, strategy, ideas and decisions clearly and succinctly to executives.

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: [email protected]. 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.