The next phase for Enterprise Mobility: Q&A with CEO Chrissy Taylor – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Taylor rose through the ranks of the company, beginning as an intern while she was in college, and then entering the Management Training Program. She went on to hold different corporate roles, both in the U.S. and the U.K. In 2016 she was appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer, and at the beginning of 2020 she took on the role of CEO.

On a recent afternoon at the company’s Clayton headquarters, Taylor discussed her first four years as CEO, and her vision for the next era at Enterprise. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: This is a big change, to transition the company name. What is the reason for it?

Taylor: We began as a leasing company in 1957. My grandfather founded Enterprise in St. Louis, and we started as a fleet management leasing company. And now the world today knows us as the largest rental car provider. But we have evolved, over 65 years, in terms of geography, in terms of customer segments, in terms of the products and offerings that we have.

And so, fast forward to today, we’ve got our original leasing business. We have the daily rental that everybody knows us so well by. We have retail car sales, we have a truck rental division, we have commuting and car share businesses. We have our global operations, and then a variety of technology solutions and partnerships that we have out there…

We’re unleashing the Enterprise name and packaging that up under Enterprise Mobility. We’re really excited about it — it fully and more accurately describes who we are and what we do today.

Q: You started as CEO on Jan. 1 of 2020. Would you tell me a little bit about the path that you and the company have been through over the past few years? The challenges of travel being cut off, and then coming back all of a sudden.

Taylor: It has been a roller coaster… First and foremost, our 90,000 employees are absolutely amazing. They were on the front lines. They were the ones that pulled us through these challenging times.

Over the past 65 years, our business has evolved and has seen a lot of challenges… We have weathered the storms because of our diverse book of business, and because of our great employees. And so if one business is up, one business might be down, but for the long haul, we are always going to be okay.

I wanted to ask you about another big change in the industry over the past few years: The rising use of EVs. How has that grown over the years, and when did that become something that Enterprise really had to be involved with?

Taylor: I would say before the pandemic we were watching it. And we were watching it very closely in Europe.

From an overall EV perspective, we embrace the responsibility, and the huge opportunity we have, to transition to an electrified fleet. And just electrification in general. What’s very, very important to us, like anything else that we do, we need to make sure we take a strategic, long-term view of the market and put the customer at the center of everything that we do.

So when we think about, as a company, electrification and EVs, there are three things that we focus on.

One, it’s customer experience. It’s got to be a positive one… We need to train and develop our people to teach the customer how to use them. That’s really important. It’s got to be a great experience, so we can help in that transition.

Two, we want to make sure that we are understanding and learning how to expand power in communities, and the charging infrastructure. One of the biggest hurdles to electrification right now, specifically vehicles, is the charging infrastructure. We have a whole team that is just focused on utilities and powers and power in all of our communities, and our big airport locations … That’s really important to us.

And then lastly, we have 9,500 locations in all sorts of different communities. We need to make sure it’s equitable access for charging and for electrification. Because we are servicing these communities, and we need to make sure that there’s access.

So it is a big undertaking. There are a lot of partners that are part of it. We are excited about it, and we embrace the opportunity. But it is really important — as the customer’s learning, and as demand continues to grow — we need to provide an excellent experience for that.