Customer Service is Sales. You’re Just Not Calling It That.
I was having dinner with a friend who works in the VIP side of a hospitality company. Every day, she deals with customers. Every day, she’s focused on retention, but nobody calls it sales.
But I said to her, " You are absolutely in sales. Just not the short-term version. It’s the long game.”
Every email, phone call, and interaction represents the brand. It all determines whether someone comes back.
We were talking about how hard that can be.
There’s no other industry quite like hospitality, where the expectation is that the customer is always right. That takes patience. It takes restraint and a level of consistency most people underestimate.
In my own work, I try to think of every client as a friend.
How would I respond to them?
How would I talk to them?
How would I help them?
You still stay professional, but something shifts when you start seeing people as part of your long-term network instead of a one-time transaction.
Recently, I was at a beautiful hotel for a long weekend. I kept running into one of the staff members. Nothing major. Just small interactions, as I had to switch my room, and she helped me. We’d laugh and say hi as everywhere I turned, this woman seemed to be there. It was a quick exchange here and there.
On the last day, as I was leaving, she said, “Denise, I hope you come back,” and I believed her. Not because she had to say it. It was because of how she showed up every time before that moment.
That’s what people remember. Not the pitch, not the transaction, and not even the problem with the room.
The feeling.
And whether you’re in hospitality or sales, that’s the job. Make people feel cared for in a way they won’t forget, because that’s what brings them back.
This is the kind of sales most people were never taught, but it’s the kind that builds real, lasting business.
