What do customer loyalty, a unified team culture and low employee attrition have in common?

In most companies, they’re treated separately. But the solution comes down to one thing: a focus on serving others.

In other words, everything is customer service.

Every job, every task – in fact, every action you take at work – is customer service. It’s a bold claim. You can probably think of many jobs that wouldn’t normally fall under the umbrella of customer service: pipe fitter, bookkeeper, surgeon, tractor mechanic. If a job isn’t even customer-facing, how could it be customer service?

Because every job meets this definition of customer service: acting in a way that fosters a better experience for at least one person.

That experience can be an exceptional event like an action-packed vacation, or a short moment like enjoying your first bite of ice cream. It can mean the mastery of acquiring a new skill, or simply feeling a spark of gratitude.

Search for “customer service definition” and you’ll find a lot of answers about helpfulness, problem-solving and reliability. They all point to the same ultimate result: Make another human being feel better. Whether it’s relief, satisfaction or joy, great service means creating a good feeling in another person’s heart.

There are many jobs that focus directly on something other than people – screens, machines, products, etc. Yet every one of those jobs exists because of one thing: an indirect focus on the people who benefit from the work done. All the machines we build, the computer code we write and use, the stuff we buy – none of those things matter without human beings.

I’ve been an ASI-listed distributor for almost 20 years, and for 15 of those years we were also on the supplier side offering decoration services. I’ve managed screen-printing and embroidery teams, purchasing and receiving departments, and a wide range of customer service and sales reps in the promo space. One thing has always been true: We’ve been most successful when everyone on the payroll knows their job is customer service.

If you’re the mechanic who fixes broken heat presses, you’re absolutely in customer service. Because when you do your job quickly and competently, my order gets through production in time to meet my deadline. You become the difference between a customer’s framed group photo where everyone is wearing matching T-shirts – and an event no one even remembers.

Think about packaging. If I get my promo in a beat-up box with a hole in the corner and 17 dirty labels slapped on all sides, my mood instantly sours. That box is sending a message about what’s inside: junk. I paid a lot for that box, but when I open it now, I’m ready for the worst. I’m going to fixate on flaws that might have gone unnoticed if a crisp, clean, neatly labeled box had primed me with a different message: Look inside for a treasure. Apple knows this story well. Just take a look at the way an Apple product is boxed. You’d think it was full of diamonds.

A dirty, reused box to send your promo products is an example of bad customer service.

Accounts receivable is a customer service department, too. When I get a clear invoice in a timely fashion, when it matches my PO, when it’s easy to pay – that fills me with relief. As a business owner, every bill makes me cringe just a little. (More money out the door!) Except when they come from companies with a squared-away A/R department. Then I think, “Oh, this will be a cinch.” I quickly pay it, and that little dopamine hit of a task completed makes me feel better. Customer service can even come in the form of a bill!

Once you see your work through this lens, everything changes – both for your customers and for your team. When I’m the customer, if I’m having a lousy day and I call a store to find out their hours, my mood lifts a little when the person who answers is genuine, friendly and helpful. Did you know you can hear a smile? That smile doesn’t just cheer you up. It creates a shared moment that makes the employee’s day better, too.

Which brings us to the other half of the equation: Once you realize you’re in customer service, that means you understand your work is about making other people’s day a little better. And that’s a meaningful place to be! Research shows that being of service brings happiness by reducing stress and fostering social connection. The act of giving triggers positive emotions, sometimes called a “helper’s high.” Put simply, job satisfaction goes up and burnout fades away when we’re helpful. In fact, generous workers report higher happiness levels and lower turnover. One study found that generous workers had a 71% job satisfaction rate compared with 54% among less generous peers.

Each month, this column will dive into different techniques for leveraging this powerful idea: that everything is customer service (and that everyone is in customer service, whether they realize it or not). We’ll use this notion to improve team unity, individual job satisfaction, profit margins and customer loyalty. Embracing it will create a win-win-win; our customers will be happier, our employees will enjoy their days more and our businesses will perform better. This one shift will drive better outcomes for everyone involved: the customer, the employee and, ultimately, your business.