An Interview with Cassie Murphey-Green of Lennox International
Guest
Casie Murphey-Green is the Senior Manager of Marketing Research Residential Business with Lennox International.
Transcript
Clay: Hi. My name is Clay Detloff. I am with Decision Analyst, a marketing research and consulting company based in the Dallas, Texas area. I have with me today as part of our Leadership Series Cassie Murphey- Green. Cassie is the Senior Manager of Marketing Research Residential Business with Lennox International. Cassie great to have you here with us today, I appreciate you being here.
Cassie: Yeah, glad to do it Clay. Our headquarters are in Richardson, Texas here in the Dallas area, we primarily we’re a full-work in the office type of company, you know, people would work from time-to-time remotely while traveling or at home, if needed, but overall, and then with that stopping immediately, and people all working from home, we didn’t skip a beat with production. Production, productivity and not only in the factories and but also at the home-office, and I think that’s a testament to how well we all just pulled together and how resilient the teams were to make sure that we kept product moving.
Clay: These changes will be kind of the same moving forward. Are there some things that you like about what the changes that have been made and that are processes that may be kind of integrated moving forward?
Cassie: Yeah, personally I have had roles with other organizations where I worked remotely, worked at home. So, I was, I have had familiarity with them. I would say that the things that our company are considering now because we weren’t a work remotely or work from home type company before. We’re really, the organization is evaluating, ‘What does this look like moving forward’?
One of the things that the company really wants to make sure we do, is keep our a great culture that we have at Lennox, and so, and we are still actually the majority of the home office is still working from home, and we’re still, the date has not been set when we’ll start coming back. But because that evaluation process is going on and one of the things they’re evaluating is, ‘What does that look like moving forward?’
And they’ve surveyed our internal employees to ask us, ‘What do we, Ideally what would we like?’
Clay: What are some of the top lessons that you guys have learned or changes you’ve made with regards to your residential homeowner customers and the relationship you have with them?
Cassie: I guess one of the things that we’ve learned a lot of the homeowners were in their homes a lot more than they had been. We had anticipated, as well as the industry had anticipated, that possibly there would be a pretty big decline in 2020, and that actually did not come to bear. And actually was the opposite people were in their homes more, they were looking for solutions, for not only just general home improvements but air quality and HVAC services, and the industry as well as Lennox, we had a had a great year, great 2020.
I think the biggest, the biggest thing that’s changed is (and not really changed, air quality was always on the forefront of Lennox’s mind) but I would say that the homeowner, as the homeowner’s mind, its awareness of the importance of air quality has grown. And so, what that looks like moving forward is, I think, more conscious effort to understand what, how to improve the air quality in your home and a lot of people don’t necessarily understand that HVAC can be a big contributor to helping your air quality. So, I think moving forward the awareness and just overall acceptance to hear more is going to be changed forever because of COVID.
Clay: You maybe talked a little bit about this already, how have the things that you had to deal with during this last year? What are the impacts they’re going to have over your business and industry either positively or negatively moving forward through the end of 2021 and beyond? What what do you see in the future for your business and industry?
Cassie: Well, I think we’re so strong, we’re trying to identify what this does to commercial, because we also have, I work in the Residential Business but there’s a big commercial piece. So understanding when the Commercial Industry, what it’s going to do. What businesses, where businesses are going to land in terms of, ‘Are they coming in the office?’ ‘Are they totally dismantling?’ We’ve heard some companies are not our clients necessarily, but just in the news, you see some companies are like ‘We’re going totally virtual, don’t need that office space.’ So, commercial wise, we, there’s still a lot I think out there that we don’t really know what it’s going to look like yet.
Personally, I was in the home a lot more, and at first, you know, I’d say at first it was a huge adjustment, but then what I learned about myself is I like being here. And I, like many people, changed some things around the house, did some small home improvement jobs but I would say the importance of home and having space because I have a teenage son who needed to do his homework and having that space for things to, for your entire life, work, school, etc. to be able to be housed in one area.
And just I think the kindness of people, I think everybody especially, I’d say our Lennox team and our leadership kept in contact with everybody. So the kindness extended by a lot of people just to check in on, not only your physical but your mental well-being, was refreshing.
Clay: That’s great. What ideas would you share that would help consumer insights strategy and business planning leaders take the next step in leading their organizations and departments into the future from here? What advice would you give your peers and colleagues moving forward?
Cassie: I think the industry is already moving towards a lot of mobile and virtual type techniques and research approaches. I think this will just further expand it in terms of how do you reach people who are remote, who may want to participate in research but don’t want to come to a focus group facility or don’t want to have someone in their home doing ethnography. So, I think it’ll just continue, I mean I think that we were already there as a industry, is working towards mobile and virtual access to people. I just think maybe it’s going to expand a little bit faster than it had, in that than the course it was already on. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see.
More open to, and me personally too is just expand my assumptions about how on-boarding of employees go. How on-boarding of vendors go. It [doesn’t] all have to be face-to-face, in-person. And the other thing, I think, is we’ve all learned a little bit of grace in terms of when we’re all working from home now. So before when you work from home you really tried to make sure that dog didn’t bark or someone didn’t come in the room to get something and I think we’ve all learned that we just got to show each other some grace in terms of we’re all just figuring this out together.
Clay: Great point, Great point. Well Cassie, that’s all I have and thank you very much for joining me today, and hope you and your organization continue to do well in the future and appreciate your time.
Cassie: Sure, Clay thanks so much.
Interviewer
Clay Dethloff
Senior VP, Insights and Innovation
Clay is an experienced marketing research professional with more than 25 years of experience in both leading and delivering qualitative research in the industry. As the head of qualitative research efforts at Decision Analyst, Clay is responsible for maintaining and improving the quality of qualitative research, identifying new/innovative qualitative research tools, and overall management of the qualitative team.
