™Marketing Magazine Issue 5 | Page 8

BONUS MATERIAL + SPECIAL OFFER TM.MEDIA/TM101 >> Being a man with a wide array of interests, John knows where his strengths lie. He focuses on customer service because it is his strongest area and he knows the value of developing that strength rather than spreading himself too thin. The future? In his view, the future of customer service is more like a return to the past. Relationships and rapport are quickly becoming a lost art. Older people are forced to move into technology in the modern touchscreen era, but there is so much tech that people don’t even know how to deal with real humans anymore once they actually get to them. Employees become numb to customers during the daily grind. What may be a special one-time event for a customer is something an employee deals with constantly. Worse, most customer-facing employees are in an entirely different demographic than the people they deal with, so they don’t necessarily empathize with their unique struggles. Those employees need to think about what it is like to be a customer. Management needs to think about what it’s like to be one of those employees. Above all, one thing that John preaches is that you have to love what you do. That means loving the customers. Loving the competition. Celebrating the clients through client appreciation events. Don’t dwell on the negative; talk about the positive clients and outcomes that make everyone look good. Build each other up. If a CEO doesn’t have time to make a call with John, he doesn’t want to work with them. “Don’t work with people who put up a fence to love.” So what are the takeaways? How can one condense an entire lifestyle and business into a few simple sentences? Well, sometimes just a few words can mean more than they seem to at first glance. “Anything is possible” might be the best summary. Imagine the best for yourself and for the future. Imagine a future where people apply to work at businesses because of the reputation the business and the employees have. A future where people want to go to work and are happy to be there. One where reputation alone filters in the good, quality people and filters out the people who aren’t the right fit. Anything, truly, is possible. 8 | CARLEPUBLISHING.COM TO ACCESS: • READ THE EXTENDED ARTICLE • INTERVIEW WITH JOHN • WATCH JOHN'S TED X TALK • CUSTOMER SERVICE PRESENTATION • COUPON CODE FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE RESOLUTION SUMMIT