Serving Customers Isn’t Customer Service

INDEX | THE EDIT | 003

We spend a lot of time in business talking about purpose. Our mission, our vision, our why. We put them in presentations, discuss them at planning meetings, sometimes write them on the office walls.

But how often do we think about what they mean in the decisions we make every day?

Purpose isn’t something to revisit only when we’re writing a business plan or questioning our direction. It’s something we live, or don’t, every day.

Throughout my career, I’ve drawn a distinction between customer service and serving customers.

Customer service is usually treated as a department, a function, a set of procedures. Serving customers is an attitude: a way of approaching the work and the people who depend on us. It applies to everyone in a business, whatever their role.

When I hire for retail, I make it clear that the job isn’t simply to sell something. It’s to serve the person who walks through the door. Why are they here? What are they looking for? How can we make their visit better, even if they don’t buy anything?

It starts with how you greet someone when they walk through the door, or when they arrive for a meeting. Is it a perfunctory hello, or are you genuinely glad to see them?

I still remember my first store training at Michael Kors, in Miami. It began before the doors opened, with the perfume we sprayed in the store and the music chosen to set a mood. It was still a store, and we were there to sell. But we were taught to wonder why each person had come in.

At the luxury level, most people walk in intending to buy. So the real question isn’t whether they’ll buy. It’s why they came. They said they wanted a new bag or a coat. Maybe they needed a lift in their day. Maybe they had a date that night. Maybe they wanted to impress someone. Who are we to judge?

What I learned then is still true today.

I look for people who are curious, who enjoy sharing what they know, who listen and, above all, who are kind.

That’s also why I don’t believe in individual sales targets. Managers have targets; we carry budgets and financial responsibilities. But I want the people on the floor focused on the customer, not on a number.

Something interesting happens when you do that. Customers feel welcome. They come back. They tell others. Employees go home feeling they’ve done something worthwhile. And more often than not, we hit our sales plan.

Sales matter. They just aren’t the starting point.

When the result becomes the purpose

Without growth and profit, a business can’t keep doing what it set out to do. But it’s easy to confuse the result with the reason for the work.

Revenue becomes the conversation. Targets become the priority. Success is measured by what we sold, how much we grew, how efficiently we ran. Slowly, the experience of the people we’re there to serve slips to second place. Not because anyone decides it should, but because numbers are easy to measure, and a thoughtful conversation or a small act of kindness isn’t.

Yet those are the things people remember.

The experience belongs to everyone

Too many businesses treat the customer experience as one department’s responsibility. It isn’t. The person answering an email, packing an order, managing inventory, processing a payment or making a decision in the boardroom is shaping it.

So is the way we treat each other. An employee who feels respected, heard and supported is far more likely to bring those same qualities to the people they serve.

Not every day will be easy. Mistakes happen, customers get frustrated, employees have bad days. But the experience isn’t defined only by what happens when things go right. It’s often defined by what we do when they go wrong. Do we listen? Do we take responsibility? Do we treat the person in front of us the way we’d want to be treated?

That’s serving customers. It’s also serving the people we work with.

Purpose is in the everyday decisions

None of this requires anything extraordinary. Sometimes it’s taking a little more time with someone who needs help. Sometimes it’s listening to a colleague who’s struggling when you have a dozen other things to do. Sometimes it’s choosing what’s right over what’s easy. And sometimes it’s remembering that the person in front of you has a life and circumstances you know nothing about.

As leaders, we set the tone, less by what we say than by what we recognize, reward and expect. If we say the customer experience is our priority but only celebrate sales results, what message are we sending? If we say our people matter but never make time to listen, what are we demonstrating?

Purpose has to be more than something we believe. It has to be something people experience.

A different way to measure a good day

I want people to leave work feeling they’ve contributed something: helped someone, solved a problem, shared what they know, made someone’s day a little better. And I want the people they’ve served to feel the same.

Not every interaction ends in a sale. Not every problem can be resolved the way someone hoped. But people can still leave feeling heard, respected and valued.

Purpose isn’t just why we started. It’s how we choose to show up every day.

Growth matters. Money matters. Results matter. But they’re no reason to forget the people who make them possible.

If the people you serve and the people you work with aren’t part of how you measure success, what exactly are you measuring?