ClearPathGPS Employee Spotlight: Erika Hunnewell, Customer Success Manager

Our customers love working with Erika, and for good reason! She knows our GPS fleet tracking service inside and out and is both responsive and a problem solver. Most importantly, she’s very focused on helping our customers get great results! In our latest employee spotlight, Erika shares her perspective and insights from her ClearpathGPS journey these past 7 years – including the evolving adoption of GPS fleet tracking, interesting customer stories, and thoughts on how it’s working being a telecommuter.  

Q: You’ve been with ClearPathGPS from close to the beginning, first as sales and now as Customer Success. How have you seen our customers and industry evolve? 

Over the years our GPS fleet tracking industry and general adoption of new technologies have evolved quite a bit. When I first started, GPS fleet tracking was in the infancy stages, a bit of a novelty tech to the field service businesses that we serve, especially considering they were mainly running their operations on pen/paper.  

My earlier conversations with business owners and operational teams were centered more around educating what the technology was all about and how it worked, and the basic benefits tracking the fleet in the field could offer.  There were definitely hesitations of tracking including concerns of privacy and perception it might give as not trusting their employees in the field. Though also a lot of aha moments and excitement around the benefits vehicle tracking could offer such as being able to get a better handle on timecard padding, proof of service, and overall capabilities to provide better customer service. 

These conversations have definitely evolved, as the GPS fleet tracking industry has matured and adoption has grown. And while pen/paper has not gone 100% away, we’ve shifted from educating about the technology to understanding our prospect and customer-specific operational challenges, and guiding them on how our fleet tracking service can help.

Q: Along with our customers and industry, how have you seen ClearPathGPS evolve over the years?

ClearPathGPS has evolved from just a GPS tracking company to continue adding more features, functionality, partner integrations, and hardware (such as solar GPS trackers for asset tracking, or dashcams!). All in the effort to better serve our customers’ thirst for greater efficiencies, data insights to better service their customers, and provide stronger protections of their business.  We also have evolved our teams to meet the growing demand and needs of our customers. In the earlier years, our sales team was very involved in helping get our customers up and running. We now have a customer success team (along with our top-rated support team) that is solely focused on both onboardings and continuing to guide our customers in getting the most out of our service. 

Q: You were quite successful in sales, share with us why you moved over to the Customer Success team when it was formed?  

I enjoyed sales and am very proud of my contributions to that team!** Though I also recognized the need, and was a big advocate of launching a Customer Success team as another opportunity to take care of our customers. Being part of the Customer Success team has allowed me to extend my consultative role with my customers, and provide more in-depth value in helping them solve their operational challenges and run more efficient and smoother operations. 

In this Customer Success role, I’m also able to contribute and have a greater impact across our entire company.  Whether it’s providing customer input to the product team for new enhancements, coordinating with marketing on sharing customer success stories, working with sales in helping prospects to better understand the value of our service, ensuring our customers are covered with the 3G networks being shutdown – you name it, I’m involved!

**Editor note: Erika is being a bit modest here – considering she helped grow the ClearPathGPS customer base from 25 to 1000+ before changing roles!

Q: You have worked with countless customers in helping them get the most out of ClearPathGPS. What are some of the overall themes you’ve come across? Or specific stories to share?

Quite a few general themes as you mentioned that continue to come up with both prospects and customers alike! Along the lines of understanding what their techs are up to in the field, or being able to prove to customers that indeed the hours were put-in or mitigating concerns of erratic driving and so forth!

Though few stories/situations do remember quite well, such as:

Construction company – towed a piece of equipment to a new site that was 250 miles away, and didn’t realize they had the exact same asset at a local job site. That was the day they picked up the phone and requested to add asset tracking to their fleet tracking arsenal!

Another ‘interesting’ story was about an HVAC customer who was suspicious of one of his employees not being where he was supposed to be. After installing trackers, they found in the truck at the end of a day an empty soda cup from a movie theater – and lo behold when they logged in to our system saw his truck was sitting in a movie theater lot for a few hours that day.

Or many stories on theft recovery. One that comes to mind was of one of our landscaping company customers who was tracking their trailers. One did get stolen and they were able to recover it. Though it turns out it was part of a larger crime ring going on in town, and this helped on a much larger scale!

Of course, love our customer’s ROI stories as well. Few instances that come to mind include one customer recovering a $100,000 trailer.  And another customer utilizes our virtual timecard reports to provide proof of past wages paid.. saving tens of thousands of dollars in claims. 

Also a lot around the value of our dashcams and being able to prove drivers not at fault, supporting a faster resolution of claims and avoiding insurance hikes.

Q: Bet you have countless stories! Thankfully you’ve been great at sharing internally with everyone even though you don’t work in our offices in Santa Barbara anymore. How’s life been as a telecommuter? How’s Florida treating you?

I feel very lucky to continue to work with ClearPathGPS as it’s such a great company. Very grateful for the operational technology tools we use as still feel very connected – and am able to get so much done without being in the office. Both my team and the company were very supportive of my relocation and adapting to working together remotely, and this was prior to the COVID pandemic, where the shift to working from home is part of the norm now. 

As far as Florida, I’m a native Floridian, and nice to be back in my home state and closer to family. Though I do feel lucky as I have been able to come back to corporate for business trips, and I’m looking forward to toasting with my colleagues at our upcoming holiday party next month.

Thanks, Erika for sharing your insights and for being a pivotal part of the success here at ClearPathGPS!

At ClearPathGPS, we are focused on helping our customers improve their operations and bottomline. Our top-rated GPS fleet tracking solutions provide real-time data insights and tools needed to more effectively manage the vehicles, people, and assets businesses send into the field everyday. Can ClearPathGPS help your operations get better results? Let’s find out – request a demo or contact us today!