Signs read: “Our Warehouses and Port are Open – Our Boxes are Moving – Rail is Active, and Cranes are Swinging – Our Ships are Sailing – as we TROPICAL remain – Fearlessly Faithful – Through the Process! – We are committed – to Island Life! – We are TROPICAL!
The “team collaboration” came as members settle in to connect from home.
A typical week sees the 10 members of Tropical’s Miami-based South Florida Sales hitting the road, calling on customers in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Lucy, and Okeechobee counties. Since March 16, the team’s workweek has been anything but typical.
“Surprisingly, the transition (to working from home) has been smooth,” said Kenia Carmona, the team’s Manager since 2015. “Part of our Business Continuity Plan includes a work-from-home component. Our Customer Service teams have been working from home for more than a year as part of a quality of work-life initiative. Our IT team has done an excellent job supporting our team and when the decision was made to send more employees home to work; our model had been tested for a year, making the transition almost seamless.”
Still, to ensure longtime and prospective customers retained confidence in Tropical’s commitment to island life while sales made the transition from sometimes weekly in-person interactions to phone calls and virtual meetings, one employee, Belkis Companioni, presented an idea.
“It was a team collaboration,” Carmona said of the execution of Companioni’s idea to create a collage of team members sending a message of confidence to customers. “Between her and I, we created the messages, while Ingrid Aleman designed the presentation. As a team, we included family members and pets, while other family members played photographers. Lastly, Bianca Companioni, Belkis’s daughter, put all the pictures together into a nice collage.”
The collage was posted to Tropical’s social media accounts and e-mailed to the team’s top-100 customers in each territory with a personal message from each member. The collage is also included in the team’s e-mail signature.
“The South Florida Sales Team is self-motivated and very passionate in what they do and whom they represent,” Carmona concluded. “We’re not only contacting our customers to inquire about business, but first and most importantly to know about their well-being, safety, and that of their families. This is what makes us who we are – Tropical!”
For more on Kenia Carmon’s journey from the Dominican Republic to Miami and manager of Tropical Shipping’s South Florida Sales, read her story here.