Meet John Bannon!

Business graduate from the 80’s rethinks career after fun second adventure in college studying French. After several trips to France, becoming fluent, seeks new, fresher life in a multitude of fields.

Found a job managing the wine department at a local Trader Joe’s, expanded into event and party wine hosting. Focusing on people first, living a more simple life, and less WORK.

False Dichotomy

We know that the answer is often somewhere in between, but the fun of this section is that you have to pick just one!

 Paper < Plastic

 Personalization > Privacy

 In-Store Shopping > Online Shopping

Transactional > Relational

 Mac < PC

Customer Service > Customer Experience

 Captain Kirk > Dr. Spock

Talk > Text

 Dog > Cat

Movie Theater > In-Home Rental

Tell Us More About Yourself…

What was your first job and what did you learn about customer service in it?

I washed pots and pans at a cafeteria-style restaurant. I learned little or nothing about customer service, it was just a lot of WORK.

Tell us how one outside influence impacted your customer service or customer experience thinking. (For Ex. book, movie, sporting event, relationship, travel)

Learning to speak French and living in France. They have a much more involved social dance with their language. They also are very polite. In my dealings with customers now, I am way more patient, and I listen very carefully to make sure I understand before I reply.

In your own personal experience, has customer service gotten better or worse in the past five years?

Worse, since most employers have some system in place that does the work for the employees. Now, most don’t need to know anything specific about what they sell.

Fill-In-The-Blank

> I consider it a bad customer experience when I am placed on hold for more than 3 minutes.

> In five years, the most important social media channel for customer service will be Amazon.

> The best book I read in the last twelve months was Steve Jobs.

You can further connect with John Bannon on Twitter.