Business Program Manager

About SmartNews

SmartNews is a global leader in redefining information and news discovery, committed to providing users with accurate, timely information and supporting quality journalism. We combine the power of our unique machine-learning technology with the expertise of our first-rate editorial team to bring news that matters to millions of users from our over 3,000 global publishing partners.

Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, Japan, SmartNews has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, and Singapore.

The Team

Our team’s role is creating a safe, secure, and trustworthy environment for users and partners while balancing the need for freedom in expression of the content/ad, innovation and business growth. This role is critical in maintaining user confidence and mitigating risks and thereby supporting the overall growth and reputation of our platform.
We will build and support the healthy content/ad ecosystem and support the successful product launch and updates across many products.

The Role

In this role, you will support the operation teams such as content/ad quality/customer support with designing the operation process, data analysis and implementing it to contribute to the acceleration of our business. Proactive collaboration with Sales, Product, and stakeholders are highly expected to lead to the product success.

The main scope will be Ads Quality and Customer support but not limited to.

You will work to identify the issues on our app from the user's voice, support the users or resolve their issues by operations with scale. You will sometimes deliver the user voices to the Product team and Engineering team to support them to improve the product for better user experience. These are crucial in ensuring user satisfaction and maintaining the overall reputation of our service.

Responsibilities

• Capture up-to-date knowledge of the company’s products and services to effectively support internal teams and external users.
• Build the review process in line with the new Ad product features and releases, while taking into account the Ad policy. Organize the business requirements, design the operation flow, and propose the functions of the review tool.
• Implement the new review process and tool into the operation. If there are any issues, organize them and provide feedback to the relevant teams for improvement.
• Respond to user inquiries by providing accurate and helpful information. Create and keep maintaining user support resources, such as FAQs and help articles, to streamline the support process.
• Promptly troubleshoot and resolve customer issues, escalating more complex cases to relevant departments when necessary.
• Provide feedback to the product and engineering teams based on customer insights to support to improve the product's functionality and user experience.

Minimum requirements:

• Experience: 2-3 years of experience in Business Program Manager or Trust & Safety (especially ads), preferably within a technology or online platform company.
• Operation/moderation process planning and management skill:
  Build the operation/moderation process from scratch and manage it for the better quality of operation output. Clarify the business requirements and prioritize them to ask the engineering team to develop the operation/moderation tools based on the overall strategy and operator's needs. 
• Communication Skills: Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders or users and articulate solutions in professional Japanese and English.
• Analytical Skills: Strong ability to analyze complex data sets, identify patterns, and make data-driven decisions.
• Technical Proficiency: Basic technical knowledge or the ability to quickly learn and understand the company’s products and services. Ability to solve the issue or build the operation process using technology for scalability.
• Cross functional collaboration skills: Collaborate across the divisions and contribute to the multiple project success.
• Japanese: Native, English: Business

Nice to have experiences/skill sets

• Flexibility and adaptability: To achieve the company goal in the fast-paced environment, flexibly adapt oneself to it and proactively play the roles are keys to success.
• Ads Review Experience: Ads review experience with policy knowledge would support to build a solid ads review process.
• SQL Writing Skill: SQL writing skill will support fast paced planning and decision making.
• CRM Proficiency: Experience with customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as Zendesk.
• Customer-Centric Mindset: A strong commitment to providing a positive customer experience, with an empathetic approach to understanding and addressing customer needs.

Working Condition

• Office Location: Tokyo

• All healthcare and social insurance required by the Japanese labor law, plus annual health check