We have a brand new opportunity for a Product Manager to support the development of our caller services and propositions – including our listening service, our new online chat channel, Samaritans self-help and new propositions targeting at-risk groups and online communities.
Samaritans is a charity working across the UK and Ireland to reduce the number of people who take their own lives and help people who are struggling to cope.
In 2017 there were 6,213 suicides in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy, and Samaritans’ vision is that fewer people die by suicide. We believe that suicide is preventable.
The Role
Your focus will be on helping Samaritans build a shared understanding of opportunities to meet the needs of people at risk of suicide and helping develop propositions that meet these needs. This means understanding what services people need and how to best communicate about the services we offer so that people who need them will choose to use them. This will involve building evidence-based consensus amongst volunteers and staff, ensuring the diversity of needs are reflected in our service designs and making sure we communicate our service offering in ways that reach people who need support with messages that encourage them to seek it.
You’ll need to be able to understand, empathise with and advocate for lots of different people, finding patterns in diverse experiences and pulling together different perspectives to make sure Samaritans support is there for the people who need it, in a way that works for them.
Key Responsibilities
- Build relationships with volunteers and staff to identify opportunities to increase the impact of Samaritans products and services
- Collate and interpret quantitative and qualitative data from different sources to understand user needs, market and social trends
- Support the marketing and promotion of products and services; providing collateral for marketing teams to ensure value propositions are accurately communicated for maximum impact
- Use research, insights and experimentation to identify improvements to product features, product marketing and service design
- Develop and maintain an effective programme of internal and external communications to inform and engage stakeholders and audiences with activities.
The Person
Previous experience as a Product Manager would be useful but is not essential. You may have transferrable experience from digital marketing, project delivery or front-line service teams. You will need to be comfortable working on uncertain and complex problems. You will need to work independently and be confident consulting with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders as you form your own views about how best to take things forward. You’ll have to be able to lead and influence without authority and provide context that helps people make evidence-based decisions in the best interests of people who need Samaritans support. You’ll likely be someone who naturally brings different groups together and is able to syntheses information from a wide variety of sources into a singular course of action.
- A confident and creative problem solver who can identify and own problems throughout the product lifecycle, making sure that product decisions stay rooted in user needs and product strategy
- A clear communicator who can discern underlying needs and goals from conversations with users and stakeholders, as well as analysis of research and data
- Able to empathise with and appreciate a broad range of people and experiences, including those that sit outside expected norms
- Previous experience of working in a fast-paced and evolving environment, replanning and prioritising work to maximise value from effort of the whole team
- Previous experience of facilitating creative workshops and group discussions
- Understands the online environment and challenges of designing human computer interactions
- Able to syntheses multiple sources of varied types of data into testable hypotheses
- Previous experience working in a multi-disciplinary or cross-functional team, with a range of specialist roles such as regulatory, financial and technical (desirable)
- Knowledge of the product lifecycle from discovery to retirement (desirable)
- Understands how to apply service design, lean and agile ways of working (desirable)