Chris Crenshaw

Sup II - Sales Operations; tenure with PODS = 7 years

 

Fun Facts

What are your hobbies? Going to the beach/riding my jet skis, Jujitsu, watching sports, travelling.

If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Surf and Turf with a side of baked mac and cheese! 

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? Santorini Greece.

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Tell us how the POET Change Network got started?
CC: Yeah so I was just in the middle of a meeting and Sal comes out and says congratulations! I was like, for what? He said, “you're going to be Change Network lead/manager!” And I had no idea what a Change Network is, right, so I went right into Google and looked up change network. And so that’s essentially that's how it started!

What are Change Champions? Who are they and what role do they play?
CC: So actually the leaders chose the Change Champions. So of course, those leaders have their trust and they have a lot of belief in those champions to be able to communicate and engage with all of the other associates to really figure out what's working, what's not and just spread the message. It's a big change, right? So for that question, I think the change champions were selected because of their production and ability to communicate with other agents. Along with the faith the leaders had that they would be able to, you know, take on the challenge.

What role have you played in the Change Network? How have you supported POET so far?
CC: I just started! So, I’m kind of just now starting to see what the future holds, right? As far as my role, my role now is to really engage the Change Champions. Give them the information, give them the tools they need to be successful in communicating new messages about what POET has to offer and its benefits. So a lot of people are like, “well, you know, I’m doing all this work but what's in it for me?” So being able to see the work firsthand, the behind the scenes at tools; things like that will help, giving the Change Champions confidence, so when we do go live they will be able to help the agents navigate.

What is one new feature you’ve seen in POET that makes you excited?
CC: The different ways to look up customers. So we have a lot of customers that call on behalf of other people. A lot of times someone calls in because their kids are moving, right? This means the parents are involved 80% of the time and that the parents are paying for it. So, they are calling on behalf of their son of the daughter. Right now, in OE, we usually ask for like an email address, or maybe a telephone number or a name. In CPQ or POET, you'll be able to actually input the person's name who called in, so if they are calling in for somebody and we can't look up that person's email address (which is invalid) or their telephone numbers don’t populate, we can ask, well, what's the name of the person who called in? We can then actually search that in POET and bring up the customer information or the quote information based off that tool! That's something that's really cool that we have in POET that we don't have in Order Entry right now.

How will POET change the way PODS interacts with customers?
CC: I just think I really believe in the overall associate experience as it starts with the associates, right? Happy associates create happy customers. Being able to get feedback from the associates, being able to have the associates be hands-on with this training that just launched, the pre-launching, ready to go live and having them really in the trenches; this is all going to be a huge success for the customers because ultimately, you're really going to create a system that's user friendly, which will decrease the stress of the agents without having to work twice as hard just to create a quote! You're already under pressure talking to somebody who's also under pressure because they're moving, right; which is the most stressful things, top five in the world, right? So you already have stress on both ends of the phone call, being able to have the easy pathway to create a quote for the customer's want from the associate’s side, I truly believe this is going to have an ultimate impact in overall success from a customer aspect.

What is one takeaway you want people to remember about a future with POET at PODS?
CC: Keep the faith, keep the faith! I know Order Entry has had its ups and downs, mostly downs. We tried AMP a couple of years ago, before COVID, that was a little bit of a fail. So with POET, it's been nothing but success so far! And I think the reason behind the success is the fact that we're doing it the way we're doing it now, right? We're involving everybody from different departments, incorporating feedback, etc. So I would say keep the faith, keep the hopes high; I think POET is going to be a big success!