AIRBNB’S PORTLAND OFFICES

The home-away-from-home experts rethink the customer service center with their new offices

Anyone who has every worked in a call center will probably confirm that it is a job often fraught with stress and frustration. It is also not a job that is known for its flexibility, however Airbnb’s new Portland headquarters might change the face of customer service.

The Portland office is the first of the company’s new Customer Experience (CX) centers that will soon be popping up around the world. Aaron Taylor Harvey and Rachael Yu, the lead internal designers on the project, worked closely with the Portland team to better understand their needs and desires. They also spent time getting to know the city and developing a local sensibility that manifests itself in the locally designed and manufactured furnishings. Weaving a more personal element into the locale, the furnishings are complemented by smatterings of objects made by Airbnb employees themselves.

Since most employees expressed stress anxiety about the current office’s lack of fixed workstations, so the designers provided assigned landing spaces with cubbyholes where team members can keep their personal affairs, work or have impromptu meetings. However, employees are not bound to remaining at their assigned station and can comfortably select a different work space according to their personal preferences. The space offers bright working spaces, dark working spaces, standing spaces, seating spaces, social spaces and more isolated corners. Employees can even work in “the bluff”, a large plywood structure that offers a cushioned mezzanine level and several floor-level duck-in booths.

As with any office where phone calls are a central part of daily function, acoustic insulation is extremely important. Among other sound dampening elements, recycled cotton was placed between ceiling joists rendering the office environment astonishingly peaceful.

As with other Airbnb offices, the Portland headquarters will have small-scale replicas of their real, live international listings.