Merchant Operations Manager, Telecom

SoundHound AI believes every person should be able to interact naturally with the products around them–by simply talking. With a global reach spanning two dozen languages, we build Voice AI products with conversational intelligence for cars, restaurant ordering, and more, allowing our customers to extend their brand in new and meaningful ways. Merchant Operations Manager, Telecom is the appointed leader for all things related to a growing and strategic part of the SoundHound for Restaurants business.  This role will be responsible for the reliable rapid scaling and operations of services that complement the smart ordering voice AI application to ensure a seamless and efficient service offering.  This includes contracting and managing all aspects of cost-effective labor resources, and all operational, workflow, and telephony platforms for the call center.  This individual will define and implement policies and procedures, train users, ensure productivity, accuracy, and service levels, track and report on performance, assist with resolving service issues, and propose technical and process improvements that allow the services to scale in accordance with the needs of each customer segment. This also includes assisting external merchants with call forwarding, call review, and responding to high-priority merchant issues related but not limited to their telephony setup. This position will report directly into the SoundHound Revenue team, and will be responsible for managing multiple individuals, many of whom may be offshore contractors. The virtual/remote role is available throughout the United States. The salary range for this position is $79,900 - $100,000. Our recruiting team will provide a more specific salary range based on work location and years of experience. In addition to salary, you will receive equity (RSUs) and benefits like healthcare and paid time off. In this role, you will: Contract with and manage nearshore and offshore call centers to provide qualified and cost-effective labor services for SoundHound Restaurants line of business. Ensure that the external merchants are correctly forwarding calls to and from the Voice AI platform and the call center. Manage various dedicated staff analysts, call center supervisors and leads to ensure the smooth operation of the organization. Coordinate with supervisor and shift leads as needed to ensure people are in the right place, personnel issues are addressed, policies are being adhered to, and issues are communicated quickly and effectively. Create policies and procedures based on call center best practices to ensure that services conform to SoundHound customer expectations and SLAs. Ensure that training materials, agent aids, and interfaces are optimized to work together to support quick agent onboarding and consistently high levels of customer service. Add restaurants to the call center as requested by mastering various internal onboarding systems and processes. Ensure follow up on restaurant-specific questions and issues from the call center. Monitor and calibrate call center operations for vendor and system-specific issues and report them to the responsible teams to triage and address - will require some attention to call center operations outside of normal business hours.   Work with other leaders on the SoundHound Revenue team on collective call statistics and analytics that include call center/contractor operations. Protect company data by defining and managing security and permissions requirements for various internal and call center roles. Assist the business development team in presenting the capabilities of the SoundHound call center for major customer prospects. Work with product team to develop and and prioritize a strategic product plan to support the business, including serving as a subject matter expert on all things related to call center .operations and capabilities for the product, development and leadership teams Using manual systems and assisting the dev team with creating automation, maintaining and expanding reporting and ensuring that relevant information is proliferated within the organization to ensure for successful integration of services and performance planning. Design and perform testing of the call center platform to ensure system enhancements operational changes are seamless when implemented into the production environment. Assist with selecting, deploying, and managing a CCaaS platform to enable skills-based routing to any agent in any location of the world and allow labor force geographic diversity - and in the meantime manage a vendor-shared PBX. Occasionally assist call center during peak times by taking calls to have hands-on experience with systems in order to provide suggestions for improving the call center work experience, and help maintain current system documentation. We would love to hear from you if: You have a minimum BA or BS in a relevant discipline You have basic understanding of call center platform vendors and telephony with regards to call forwarding, number assignment/provisioning, and debugging call/MMS/SMS issues with customers and businesses You have willingness to learn how to use multiple SoundHound systems, voice AI technology, and solution workflows that support restaurants and other targeted industries You have a minimum 5 years experience with all aspects of call center operations, from staffing to policy design and core technologies - preferably with a help desk, support, and campaign mission You have a minimum 1 year experience with a major telecommunications provider in either a business or customer facing role - preferably with engagement with key industries and enterprise-level clients You have experience managing a BPO or offshore workforce You have experience managing an operations and QA function You have experience creating and using Google Sheets, pivot tables, and effective presentations that summarize operational data You have demonstrated ability to think critically and diagnose, assess, escalate and resolve issues and champion solutions You have the ability to employ empathy and cultural sensitivity to bring out the best in an offshore team   Here at SoundHound, diversity, equity, and inclusion are key to who we are as a company. With a mission to build Voice AI for the world, creating a team with global perspectives is critical to our success.  We care deeply about fostering an environment where everyone is supported and can do their best work. SoundHound ensures that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations to participate in the interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other employment benefits. Employees enjoy comprehensive health care, paid time off, discounted fitness classes, and flexible working hours. Learn more about our philosophy, benefits, and culture at  https://soundhound.com/careers/ .  To view our job applicant privacy policy, please visit  https://static.soundhound.com/corpus/ta/applicantprivacynotice.html . Come join our growing team and bring your unique voice to our mission! #LI-TN1 #LI-REMOTE