With coronavirus spreading across the globe at lightning speed, no one is immune — from the disease or its effects. SAMA’s Director of Customer Solutions, Chris Jensen, was a sector head at global logistics company DHL on the morning of Sept. 11. He spoke recently with SAMA’s editor-in-chief, Nicolas Zimmerman, to share what he learned from the experience about helping customers through crisis.
Nicolas Zimmerman: So Chris Jensen, we’re in a kind of crazy, unpredictable time right now. Things are changing seemingly by the hour. We should I think timestamp this. Today is, what is it, March 21st, I believe March 21st, 2020. And we’re talking because when most people think of a “Black Swan” event, that kind of changes everything overnight, most people think of 9/11. So if you could, can you put us in place and tell us sort of where you were on, say, September 10th, 2001, and give a little bit about your background too?
Chris Jensen: Absolutely. Thanks, Nicolas. So September 10th was a Monday, and I at the time was sector head for the engineering and manufacturing sector at DHL global forwarding at the time.
I was 41 years in my entire career with DHL. But at that time, I was the sector head there and I was also managing a couple of strategic accounts, Caterpillar and John Deere, namely. But also, had a team of individuals that were also working with their customers. I had been in that role for about three years at that time. And before that I was a SAM on a couple of customers starting in 1994. And before that I was at a variety of the sales, district, sales, field sales, and then before that, operations — almost every kind of level inside of one of the biggest logistics forwarding companies in the world.
So on the 10th was a normal day in the office. We always had our sales calls team meetings, you know, business as usual. If I remember at the time it was actually quite busy. Coming into September, the beginning, of the quarter there a little bit, and so kind of…totally business as usual.
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