You might be a little freaked out seeing “love” in the headline of a business article. It practically feels taboo to mention love in a professional setting. Don’t worry: I’m not going to suggest a group hug after your team meeting.

But customer service that doesn’t start with love can never become exceptional.

One of the definitions of love according to Merriam-Webster is “unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another.” Sounds like customer service to me. Or what it should be.

Diving a little deeper into terminology, “love” isn’t the superlative of “like.” We get a little loose with love, saying things like, “I love chocolate,” when we really mean we like it a lot. Love isn’t about liking. It’s about the same values that formed our country – recognizing that we’re all equal and deserve respect – a recognition of our humanity. We’re all people with values, feelings and dreams.

As Simon Sinek points out, “100% of customers are people. 100% of employees are people.” The most important result of a customer service interaction is connection with another person. We use KPIs, CRMs and other tech to measure our work and be more efficient, and this can be really helpful. But they all tend to reduce customer service to something uninspiring: the transaction. Self-checkout at the grocery store or ordering kiosks at fast-food restaurants send a message – that the transaction is not only more important than connection, but that the transaction is the main event. (Perhaps it’s not so surprising that the biggest retailers and fast-food restaurants are pivoting back to human interaction.)

Here’s a little quiz to get to the heart of the matter. When you look inside and consider your core values, your purpose, what you find deeply fulfilling – which of these resonates more?

A. I want to live a life full of connection. I want to exchange loving kindness with others.

B. I want to complete the maximum number of transactions as efficiently as possible.

How do you want to spend your days?

There’s nothing wrong with efficiency, nothing wrong with technology that helps us be more efficient. But strong connections and trust aren’t created through efficiency. Funny enough, efficient transactions happen when there is trust and connection. And I can tell you from experience, when an order doesn’t come out as expected, it costs a lot less time and money to find a collaborative solution with a trusted partner than it does to handle a contentious dispute.

The Hall of Fame Basketball Coach John Wooden said the two most important words are love and balance. Love, he said, “means giving. It means sharing. … It means understanding. … It means learning. And you must always consider the other side, the other person.”

“Customer service that doesn’t start with love can never become exceptional.”

My colleague Mark Jamnik embodies this as a customer. Whether we have lunch at a counter-service or table-service restaurant, Mark always introduces himself to the server and asks their name. I’ll admit it felt awkward the first few times, but now I find it heartwarming. I’ve noticed that while most of the servers are a little surprised, they always seem to appreciate being seen as an individual.

In the past three decades, I’ve witnessed hundreds of customer service people throw shade about their customer after reading an email or finishing a frustrating phone call. In just about all those cases, these customer service reps don’t show signs of having applied Stephen Covey’s 5th habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” How do they describe their customer?

• An impediment (to completing the transaction)
• Slow (at completing the transaction)
• Ignorant (of information required to complete the transaction)
• Indecisive (about the details of the transaction)

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been frustrated by customers plenty of times. I’ve experienced everything on the list above and felt real annoyance about it.

In those situations, there’s only one choice I can make that results in me having a good day. To change my attitude. To approach the interaction as a connection, as a choice to support the well-being of the customer. To come to the conversation with love, which brings compassion, curiosity and helpfulness.

You know what’s funny? When I do that, I also get the deal closed faster, and the next deal goes much more smoothly. Because starting with love means the customer feels cared for – that their best interest is your focus. That builds trust, and trust is the foundation of absolutely every type of relationship.

If you focus on connection instead of transactions, you’ll likely find that you’ll grow your customer base, earn more and better enjoy your job. Ironically, even if your main goal in business is profit, focusing on people will allow you to thrive more than focusing on transactions.

This is fundamentally a question of attitude. You can wash the dishes because it’s your turn, or you can wash them because your spouse will really appreciate it and it makes both of you feel better when you make the choice to support another person’s well-being. Exceptional customer service comes from making these little choices to support someone else’s well-being, one interaction after another.

If you’re skeptical, try this experiment. For the next five days, at the end of each day, write down how good you felt about your day on a scale of 1 to 5. For the five days after that, set a reminder on your phone to appear right as you start work or return from any breaks: “Start with love.” Then make those same journal entries at the end of the day.

You spend half of your waking hours at work. Why not enjoy them, and make others’ days better in the process?