Helping Rebuild Lives
Chris Hunter was recruited to be the CEO of CRS Temporary Housing in 2016. He accepted the challenge to achieve strategic growth for the company by leveraging Its expertise in locating temporary housing solutions for displaced policyholders as a result of loss. CRS’ growth in the past few years has been achieved under Chris’ leadership with an influx of capital, and through organic growth and acquisition. Chris is an inspiration to employees, building a positive culture of communication and accountability. He solicited the employees’ input when crafting the mission, vision, and values for the organization, which are earnestly embraced by employees.
Chris is a “no-nonsense” performance-driven global executive with excellent communication and coaching skills. His experience is broad and diversified including an undergraduate degree in Engineering and Applied Science, and MBA and 30-plus years of leadership roles in multi-national billion-dollar organizations. One can say he has a gift for being a relationship builder who is inquisitive and a great listener, whether interacting with customers, employees, or investors. He has demonstrated strategic thinking skills with an emphasis on understanding subsequent risks. Chris leverages his expertise outside CRS with his participation on various boards including Co-Chairman of the Executive Advisory Board for the University of Denver’s Daniels School of Business and also as Chairman of Adopt Technologies.
Compassionate Customer Focus
CRS was founded over 30 years ago to meet the needs of policyholders who have had a loss to their primary residence, typically due to fire, water or natural disaster. “Our purpose remains to compassionately assist policyholders in rebuilding their lives after a loss of their primary residence,” says Chris. “The industry is challenging due to a competitive environment, increased demands for service without increasing costs, and other market pressures.”
CRS is a values-based organization. One of their fundamental values is maintaining a Compassionate Customer Focus, where they listen to customers to better understand their needs and provide realistic expectations and unique solutions. Most of CRS’ customers are in a very stressful place having lost their primary residence, so Chris and the high-performance teamwork to provide support and assist in their time of need. “We regularly share ‘customer service minutes’ throughout the organization, whether the situations contain accolades or areas of opportunity for improvement. By sharing these experiences our employees learn and are motivated to continuously improve our service to our customers.”
At CRS, we use our 30 years of experience and industry knowledge to leverage our technology — including the expansion of customer portals, omni-channel communication tools, and data mining for predictive solutions—to improve the customer experience, advance quality, and gain efficiency for our teams.
Building the Future
“The primary function of a successful CEO is to ask the right questions and listen to the answers that are provided using a Socratic Methodology of dialogue in the pursuit to collectively find solutions. I endeavor to achieve this by asking several questions to a variety of stakeholders to get a cross-section of answers. It is important to follow up with deeper, clarifying questions such as the ‘five whys’. Asking a sequence of ‘why’ questions helps get to the core or root cause of an issue or opportunity,” Chris explains as the secret to becoming a great leader.
CRS prides themselves on having a professional management team with an excellent blend of industry experience, as well as strong business acumen and experience with other larger companies in differing industries. They lead the charge researching, recommending and implementing processes and systems to deliver efficiencies and exceptional customer service. CRS‘ performance management system is based on not only individual job performance but also strict adherence to the Company’s values. The importance of performance and behavior (adhering to cultural values) cannot be emphasized enough.
CRS has a relentless focus on customer satisfaction in terms of setting goals, soliciting feedback, measuring, and reporting on results, alongside training and developing employees. “We focus on attracting and developing strong performers and retaining only ‘A’ players. We continue to focus on improved IT security requirements well beyond the basics,” says Chris. “We provide and continue to develop detailed reporting capabilities for our partners. Additionally, we are leveraging Business Intelligence along with 30-plus years of experience and data capture to develop unique solutions for our customers.”