Driving customer-centric growth

How Ryder uses Alchemer to deliver ROI through customer and employee feedback

As Ryder’s Senior Director of Customer Insights, John Trenholm is responsible for delivering measurable value to the organization, working directly with senior leadership. This leadership support comes with expectations for clear ROI, which is why Alchemer has become a preferred feedback platform. Unlike other tools, Alchemer makes it easy to demonstrate ROI by turning customer insights into actionable results, helping Ryder not only gather valuable data but also translate it into real business impact.

“With Alchemer, we own our data, move fast, and prove ROI.”

— John Trenholm, Senior Director of Customer Insights, Ryder

About Ryder

Ryder System, Inc., a Fortune 500 company founded more than 90 years ago, leads the way in transportation and logistics. Ryder specializes in supply chain management and fleet management solutions, serving industries such as food and beverage, retail, automotive, technology, and more.

Ryder manages one of North America’s largest fleets, with over 260,000 commercial vehicles. Their fleet management services include full-service leasing, commercial truck rental, vehicle maintenance, and support services like insurance, permits, and fuel management. As a leading third-party logistics (3PL) provider, Ryder delivers end-to-end supply chain solutions—including warehousing, distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, and last-mile delivery—tailored to businesses of all sizes.

Challenge & Goals

John Trenholm is the Senior Director of Customer Insights at Ryder. He leads voice of customer (VoC) programs and ad hoc research across Ryder’s business. John is accountable for delivering measurable business impact and ROI with every initiative.

Ryder began working with Alchemer in 2013. Initially, Alchemer was used strictly for ad-hoc surveys within their fleet management operations. When John joined Ryder several years ago, he was tasked with bringing a more structured process to gathering and using insights from customer feedback and employee input within their overall transportation and logistics operations.

He faced several challenges:

Fragmented feedback systems: The Voice of Customer program was piecemeal relying on multiple tools and partners.
Cost-prohibitive research: Traditional agency-based research was expensive and prevented Ryder from managing their data.
Complex implementation requirements: Other enterprise feedback platforms required specialized developers and significant investment for implementation.

John’s mandate was clear: create a scalable, cost-effective feedback system that could prove ROI to executive leadership while driving real business impact across Ryder’s diverse portfolio of fleet management, logistics, and supply chain services.

Solution

John broadened Alchemer adoption, aiming for a flexible solution that could be quickly implemented without heavy technical support, scale across multiple units and use cases, provide cost-effective research to reduce reliance on agencies, and ensure full ownership of their data. The other feedback tools they used fell short, they were clunky, costly, and slow to deploy.

With John’s direction, Ryder expanded its use cases with Alchemer, evolving from a single survey tool to a critical part of its enterprise-wide research and listening strategy.

Today, Alchemer powers a wide range of customer and employee insights initiatives at Ryder, helping the company optimize operations, enhance customer and employee experiences, and drive business growth.

“It’s flexible, cost-effective, and just works.”

— John Trenholm, Senior Director of Customer Insights, Ryder

Use Cases

Ad Hoc Research & Market Insights

Faster research, lower cost: By bringing its research projects in-house with Alchemer, Ryder eliminated agency fees, gained the flexibility to run its own studies on-demand, purchased samples directly through the platform, and, most importantly, retained full ownership of its data. This shift gave the team the agility and independence to conduct faster, smarter research.
Outpace competitors with insight from the front lines: Ryder used Alchemer to spot trends, guide product strategy and new offerings, and stay ahead of competitors and make decisions that drive real impact.

Multi-location Insights & Employee Experience

Solve multi-location problems at scale: Gathering insights from hundreds of locations to identify site-specific challenges and support needs—helping them understand where to allocate resources and budget. Since each location has unique needs, Alchemer surveys are customized accordingly. Hosting surveys on a private domain also increases engagement by making the experience feel secure and credible.
Give employees a voice—and a reason to listen: Using Alchemer Survey for internal projects, enabling employees to submit questions before town halls and provide feedback afterward. Town hall meetings can be costly, as they require employees to set aside valuable work time, making it essential to ensure these sessions are impactful and efficient.

Key Outcomes

Alchemer consistently delivers impactful feedback and measurable results, making it an ideal solution for Ryder’s budgets and a reliable way to prove ROI to key stakeholders.
The implementation of Alchemer across Ryder has delivered significant business impact:

Proven ROI and cost-effectiveness: John effectively proves the ROI of Ryder’s VoC and market research initiatives, thanks to Alchemer’s competitive pricing structure, which delivers measurable value for minimal investment, especially when compared to agency models. Additionally, Alchemer’s ease of use, without the need for third-party implementation, allows Ryder to deliver value quickly and cost-effectively.
Maximizing the impact of internal gatherings: Town halls are now more effective and impactful. Since these gatherings take employees away from daily work and involve significant costs, collecting input and feedback before and after helps ensure they are focused, meaningful, and deliver real value.
Scalable CX offering: Ryder now offers Alchemer-based feedback and VoC solutions as a value-added service to its logistics customers—strengthening client relationships, enhancing differentiation, and creating a powerful selling point with the potential for new revenue streams.
Increased speed and flexibility: Alchemer enables rapid survey deployment, cutting Ryder’s survey build and feedback collection time from weeks to days—accelerating time to value.

Conclusion

By leveraging Alchemer’s flexibility, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness, Ryder has transformed its approach to customer and employee insights from a limited, tactical function to a strategic business driver with demonstrable ROI. As Ryder continues to evolve, Alchemer scales alongside them, supporting new use cases and driving even greater impact in the years ahead.

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