Here's How Crescent Electric Supply Has Handled the Pandemic

With 140 distribution facilities in 27 states, Crescent Electric Supply Company has been ahead of the curve in its ability to support essential workers during the pandemic as the country works at flattening the curve of COVID-19. Here are some things they immediately put into place and continue to do to mitigate risk for employees and customers while keeping productivity levels high.

Safety Measures

Our customers are essential electrical contractors that work on jobsites, industrial operations or government sectors. They continuing to support our country’s infrastructure and produce essential products and consumables, and still need supplies to get their jobs done. We’ve added new measures to provide a strong supply chain and safe service through curbside pick-up and jobsite delivery with no signature required.

• More Info about safety measures: COVID-19 Landing Page
• Video – Thank you to Essential Workers: https://youtu.be/SulywNPqLcg 
• Video - Here’s how we can meet your needs: https://youtu.be/0jVDieQlkVE 
• Video – We serve you 24/7: https://youtu.be/9kATePCa-r0 
• Video – We can deliver to your jobsite, no signature required: https://youtu.be/UwOuGQ4RnJo 

As states and local authorities lift shelter-in-place orders, we’ll begin allowing customers to enter our branch locations. Our team members will wear Crescent-branded masks, offer sanitation stations at the entrance, floor markers to note 6’ of social distancing and offer our customers their own mask to wear. 

Temporary Health Screening Facilities

In addition to our servicing our customers’ core needs, we’re working with many of our industrial customers who have shifted and re-tooled their production to hand-sanitizer or face shield manufacturing. We’ve also added some of those products into our own supply chain. Additionally, we’re working to provide lighting and power solutions for temporary, outdoor COVID-19 screening facilities as our country re-opens in the coming weeks and months. We’re providing our customers with how-to guides on setting up these temporary screening facilities, and our team is trained to help guide them through the buying and set-up process. These guides/resources are linked below.

Screening Employees: 

• Screening Employees: EEOC Grants Permission to Screen Employee Temperatures
• How-to Guide: A 5-Step Process to Begin Screening Employees for Employees for COVID-19
• How-to Guide: Choosing a Generator for Your COVID-19 Screening Facility

StockNOW Onsite Inventory Management

One of Crescent Electric Supply's StockNow inventory management solutions.Due to our customers’ heightened needs for health, safety and security of their employees, we anticipate an increase in implementations of Crescent’s StockNOW programs. As our customers look to keep team members in their industrial settings or jobsites versus sending them out to pick up product, we have the capability of implementing onsite inventory with automatic replenishment. In addition to reducing in-and-out traffic for supplies, these programs will also save our customers and their purchasing teams time and money by reducing paperwork, product over-supply and waste through a user-friendly inventory management app on an iPhone or iPad. 

StockNOW Customer Quote as it pertains to COVID-19:

“We never have an issue with parts being out of stock because when we use an item, there is always a backup,” stated Bryon George, Operations Manager at Vertitron Midwest, Inc., a manufacturer of microprocessor-based elevator control systems. “We had our best month in the history of our company this past April 2020 after the stay-at-home orders were put in place with COVID-19. Having Crescent Electric’s StockNOW program allowed us to be well-positioned to meet increased customer demands and not worry about having certain parts in stock or taxing any one of our employees to manage part replenishment and inventory stocking.”

Community Leaders

Many members of the Crescent team have gone above and beyond to take care of each other and their communities. This includes sewing hundreds of handmade face masks, ear-savers for face masks, appreciation car parades for our hardworking crews, and supply and set-up of triage health centers as well as outdoor screening facilities. We couldn’t be more proud of our team…they’re heroes in our eyes. 

• Full story: Crescent Employee Sews 600 masks
• Full story: Crescent Community Health Center Sets up Temporary Screening Facility 

Communication is Key

Communication is a top priority. We’ve found how valuable communication is to our employees and customers, and during a crisis, it’s impossible to over communicate. A high-level of communication from our corporate office has instilled confidence on the local level that every step and precaution is being taken to keep everyone safe while continuing to serve our customers. Pandemic or not, this supreme communication will become the standard, as we see its impact is improving our overall culture and customer satisfaction. Here's a list of the type of communications we prepared:

• COVID-19 Landing Page for customers to review updates on our safety measures and service capabilities
• Industry-wide podcast (hosted by NAED) to share best-in-class tips
• Weekly Videos produced and disseminated across social media channels to keep our customers informed about our capabilities and safety protocols
• Crescent Community Connection – a new online community for employees to brainstorm and communicate with one another, as well as, share photos and productivity tips.
• COVID-19 Intranet Page for employees to review safety protocols and COVID-19 resources. This includes necessary signage for 140 branches, access to telehealth for their own health concerns and a comprehensive FAQ for employees who may have questions
• COVID-19 email alias – any time an employee (we have 2,000) has a question, they can simply email to a special email address we set up and receive a response within 4-8 hours
• YoungDaily communication to all employees from Crescent’s CEO
• Company-wide live webinars to share pressing updates and answer questions
  

Marie Young is the Manager of Marketing and Communications for Crescent Electric Supply Company and can be reached at [email protected].

Crescent Electric Supply was No. 42 on Industrial Distribution's 2019 Big 50 List on account of its $190 million in 2018 sales of industrial products.