Most customers don’t contact a company because everything is going well. They get in touch when something has broken, stalled, gone missing, become confusing or started costing them money.
That is especially true in fleet maintenance and roadside assistance, where a customer interaction can start with a driver stuck on the side of the road with a vehicle out of service and a business losing revenue by the minute.
This reality shapes Cox Fleet’s entire view of customer experience.
“We primarily handle large trucks, and so our primary customer is Class 4 through 8 trucks and trailers of what I would call varying urgency,” Alex Fraser, Vice President of Customer Operations at Cox Fleet by Cox Automotive, told CX Today. “So, everybody's in a big hurry. Some of them are in bigger hurries.”
In that environment, customer relationship management (CRM) becomes the connective tissue between the customer, the contact center, roadside providers, operational systems, AI agents and the data that can help resolve the issue faster.
Urgent Customers Need Advocacy, Not Just Efficiency
Many CRM programs still optimize around internal metrics: handle time, case closure, routing accuracy, channel containment or cost per contact. While those measures are important, urgent situations expose a deeper question as to whether the customer feels that the organization is on their side.
For Cox Fleet, the answer begins with safety.
“We always start with safety, so we want to make sure that whoever's calling in or whoever's impacted is safe,” Fraser explained. “The way that we measure it is: were we able to resolve their situation, which generally means getting them off the side of the road or getting the truck rolling as quickly as possible in a cost-effective manner for them, while maintaining safety throughout all of that.”
The interaction is treated as a disruption to be solved, rather than a transaction.
“Nobody wants to call us,” Fraser said, “and it's not that anybody ever wants to call in to fix a bill or dispute this or dispute that, but they really don't want to be broken down on the side of the road.”
Where many enterprises fall short is that they design service journeys around processes rather than pressure. Yet poor service has measurable commercial consequences. PwC’s 2025 Customer Experience Survey found that 52 percent of consumers stopped using or buying from a brand because of a bad product or service experience, while 29 percent stopped because of poor customer experience online or in-person.
For urgent interactions, that risk is intensified. A customer already has a problem and the CRM environment either helps the business create confidence, or it makes the problem feel worse.
Cox Fleet’s approach is to position itself as an advocate, Fraser said.
“It’s taking people who often are finding themselves in a very frustrating situation… and understandably are frustrated by what's going on, and helping them realize we're actually their advocate in this, so we're going to try to find the best service provider who can help them the first time.”
In high-stress moments, CRM workflows should help agents answer, “What does the customer need to feel safe, informed and represented?”
CRM as a Coordination Layer
Cox Fleet’s service model also shows why CRM cannot operate in isolation. A roadside event involves the customer, driver, contact center, service provider, vehicle data and follow-up communications. Each party needs accurate information at the right time.
“For us, tip-to-tail is important,” Fraser said. During an average event window of around two hours, the company has to gather information, identify the right service provider, manage expectations and keep everyone aligned.
“Throughout that, it's how do we get all the best correct information right at the beginning? How do we then find the right service provider… and then how do we follow up throughout right and really keep both the customer and service provider?” Fraser explained.
CRM becomes a coordination layer rather than a static record. Cox works with Salesforce from a CRM standpoint, Genesys for phone operations and Sierra around virtual agents, Fraser said.
