One of our Core Values is CUSTOMER FOCUS. This value could mean different things to different people. For me, as the Chief Operating Officer, it’s very closely related to customer service. It means that no matter what you are working on, when a customer calls, we drop what we are doing and focus on satisfying that customer. Sometimes that is hard to do with the pressure of deadlines and other responsibilities. However, if we don’t satisfy that customer or the next one… or the next one… we could potentially lose them.

Losing a customer affects our business and our ability to grow and succeed as an organization. Customers provide the revenue for our company to provide the work environment and benefits to our employees. Without customers, we literally don’t have a business, which is why it is critical to focus on the customer every time a need arises.

I also view CUSTOMER FOCUS as relating to both external and internal customers. For the employees at our corporate headquarters in Charlotte, the internal customers are our field people who manage the chassis every day. When they call with a request, they usually need something to help satisfy an external customer. Whether the request is related to an M&R question, an issue that a trucker may be having, or a vendor’s concern, it usually leads back to something related to one of our external customers. As such it is just as important that we are responsive to our internal customers because, in the end, that request is most likely in service to an external customer.

When our field organization and our corporate employees act together as a team and keep CUSTOMER FOCUS top of mind, we can continue to thrive and build our company to be the model of customer service for the industry.