Tim Norrell Would Rather Have Guests Than Customers.
The difference between customer service and hospitality, and what it did to one business’s 1-star reviews, from a trainer who says he was teaching it even when the course was called sales.
One Wednesday, Tim Norrell sat down with a restaurant owner and kept getting interrupted. The owner was watching his “transaction numbers,” which were up 14%. When Tim asked how he’d got them, the answer was marketing: nobody in town, a place of about 12,000 people, was spending more on it, the owner said, and it was paying off.
Tim asked who his main competitor was and drove straight there. It was about 2 p.m., the place was quiet, and the owner gave him fifteen or twenty minutes. Tim’s first question was whether he was happy with his transactions today. The owner looked puzzled. “We don’t have transactions, we have friends and guests and I am very happy with them today,” he said, as Tim wrote it up afterwards. He spent close to what his rival spent, he told Tim, just not on coupons, billboards and radio spots: “we spend it inside the restaurant, we spend it on our guests.” Lately that had meant $700 to repair the car of a young mother of three. “One of these restaurants hired my consulting services and one of them didn’t,” Tim wrote. “I’m looking forward to working with this owner and seeing friends, guests and not transactions!!”
That distinction is the one Tim teaches. He is a Hospitality Trainer & Consultant with Passion Hospitality, based in Ozark, Missouri, and a Hospitality Manager at a Chick-fil-A in Springfield, and he trains managers and employees to treat the people who come through the door as guests rather than customers. The results he points to show up where the public can see them. One business he worked with had averaged five 1-star reviews a month in the six months before. In the six months after it began focusing on hospitality, it had two in total, and none in the last four months. At another, 79% of customers were happy with its service. Nine months into focusing on hospitality, its guest satisfaction score was 90%.
Those 1-star reviews carry weight with people who have never been inside. In BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 77% of US consumers said negative reviews make them less likely to use a business.
Customer or Guest
Tim doesn’t like the word customer. “Customer service is more transactional and Hospitality is more personal,” he says. “Even the word customer is not a word I like, I much prefer guest, because once again customer is transactional while guest is hospitality.”
He defines both. Customer service is “the minimum or basics of service, it is competent and efficient but offers nothing personal.” Hospitality is “giving the guest a personal experience that is so authentic (genuine) that the guest ‘Never Forgets It’ and the guest tells others about it.”
Inside a business, he says, the gap looks like this: customer service “is automatic and treats everyone the same with no desire to get to know the person individually,” while hospitality “is personal and focuses on the guest and getting to know them and caring about them as a person.”
The last part of his definition, the guest telling others, can be counted. In the same BrightLocal survey, consumers were about twice as likely to have written a review of a positive experience in the past year (60%) as of a negative one (29%).
Tim learned where that line runs long before he worked in a restaurant.
From Zales to Norrell & Associates
He joined Zales Jewelers straight out of college as a manager trainee, and when he left twelve years later he was a District Manager. At Pitney Bowes he worked as a sales rep, sales manager, trainer and branch manager, twelve years again.
From 2000 he was the owner of his own firm, Norrell & Associates, training employees for companies across various industries, primarily in sales and hospitality. “Before the days of Zoom, I traveled throughout the country providing training to my clients,” as he puts it on his profile.
“In 2020 I turned 65 and partly because of Covid, I decided to retire,” he says. For several years, someone had “bugged” him wanting to buy his business. His profile shows the next chapter beginning in September 2021, as a Hospitality Manager at Chick-fil-A, where he has now spent five years.
What Sales Training Was Teaching
Tim files the whole of that earlier career under the same heading as his current one.
“When I taught Sales Training I was actually teaching Hospitality because I was teaching salespeople to ‘care’ about their prospect and to ‘get to know them’ in a more personal way.”
Knowing someone personally, he taught, ran both ways. “I taught them that in order to know someone in a personal way, they (the salesperson) needed to be willing to become more vulnerable and be willing to allow their prospect to know them in a more personal way.” The aim was to see the prospect “in a more personal and caring way and not as a conduit to a sale.”
He doesn’t claim the lesson as his alone. “I am not certain that other Hospitality consultant do not know this: but it is certainly something I learned by training salespeople.”
In the restaurant, one of the things he teaches everyone is aimed at the smallest guests.
Speak to the Children
“Speak to the Children” is the rule. Tim asks businesses whether, when a guest comes in with children, anyone greets the children. Most of the time, he has written, people look at him “as though I have a ‘giant purple zit’ on my nose” and tell him they greet the adults. The reasons he hears are that they never thought about it, or that they live by “the stranger/danger philosophy.”
He answers the safety concern directly. “Listen, I understand that we all (normal people) want children to be safe and I personally would NEVER do anything to hurt a child, but I am going to speak to them when they come in.” In a safe environment, he argues, it teaches children “that everyone is not a danger,” and it builds trust between the business and the parent or grandparent. He has seen many adults “beam” when he talks with their child.
One girl brings him a rock every time her family comes in, and he keeps the rocks lined up on his desk. Another, ten years old, has talked through her doubts about Santa with him. “She trusts me with those thoughts!”
There’s one more reason, and it isn’t only about the children.
A Dill Pickle and a Mad Scientist
“Children are funny and open and honest in their speech, you can get a good laugh and have fun!” he wrote. “That is another thing we seem to lose on our way to work each day, the ability to have fun!”
Tim was once passed over for a promotion, he has written, for not being serious enough. When he asked how serious he needed to be, the advice was: “you laugh too much, you consider the office to be your playground, you are always making our employees laugh by telling jokes and that is not what we are looking for.” The next day he came into the office with a dill pickle in his mouth.
“I do think we need to take our work somewhat serious, but not ourselves and if we can make a team member laugh or a guest laugh I believe we have accomplished something that binds us together!”
He quotes Truett Cathy on it, “If you aren’t having fun, you are not doing it right,” and agrees. When the Chick-fil-A where he works held a “Mad Scientist” evening, Tim volunteered to be the Mad Scientist, back from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. after a shift from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. His reason: “it was FUN!”
In his answers he ties it to the business. Once a team buys in to hospitality, “there is a connection between caring for the guest and happiness and fun in the employees.”
Not every day in the store is fun, and he has written about one that wasn’t.
The Keys in the Compactor
Three young women who had flown in from Ohio for a week in Branson stopped at the store, and Tim gave them several places to go and things to see. They left delighted, then came back in, frantic: they had a rental, they said, and had accidentally tossed the keys into the trash compactor. He began removing the trash by hand, one piece at a time. He had nearly emptied it when he saw one of them motion the other two to leave, hold up the key from her pocket, and go. “No I’m sorry, no thank you, and I was angry for quite a few minutes!”
What stopped him, he wrote, was realizing he shouldn’t “spew my anger on my other guests,” and then a line he heard as God getting his attention: “you teach Hospitality, now live it out, everyday in every way.”
Faith is part of the work, he says, and he wanted it in this piece. “It is a very important part of my life and the caring about guests has a lot of faith belief that is a part of it.” He didn’t come away from the compactor thinking hospitality is easy. “WOW, Hospitality is hard and loving people is hard too, but with God’s help I can and will do it!”
Where Tim Is Now
Since January 2026, Tim has worked as a Hospitality Trainer & Consultant with Passion Hospitality, alongside his role at Chick-fil-A. What he wants from the next year is “more training and speaking engagements in order to make others ‘passionate’ about hospitality and give them a desire to serve their guests with hospitality!”
This fall he was asked to give a speech on hospitality, and the person hiring him asked for examples. Tim put the request to his LinkedIn network, asking for stories of “passionate hospitality” given or received, and promised: “I will give you credit.”
Outside work there is football, any football. He has loved it for 68 years, “that is longer than I have known my wife!!” Two years ago he went to games in eight states, and last year in nine: high school, college and pro. It teaches, he has written, “leadership, sportsmanship, humility, teamwork, & even Hospitality!!” When he left for a Nixa Eagles season opener, his wife saw him off with “see you when the season is over.”
Guests often ask him how long he’s going to work. His answer is always the same: “until I stop having fun.” “And I am serious (pun intended) about that!”
The Tim Norrell Playbook: Passionate Hospitality
Call them guests. Customer is transactional, he says, and guest is hospitality.
Get to know the person. Customer service treats everyone the same. Hospitality cares about the guest as a person.
Be willing to be known. He taught salespeople to let the prospect know them in a more personal way.
Speak to the children. In a safe environment, greet them, and the parent or grandparent often beams.
Have fun, do it right. Take the work somewhat seriously, but not yourself.
From the Diary of Tim Norrell
Tim Norrell is an Ozark, Missouri-based Hospitality Trainer & Consultant with Passion Hospitality.
Role
Hospitality Trainer & Consultant, Passion Hospitality, and Hospitality Manager, Chick-fil-A
Based in
Ozark, Missouri
Previously
Norrell & Associates (Owner, 2000 to 2020), Pitney Bowes (1988 to 2000), Zales Jewelers (1976 to 1988)
Also
Ouachita Baptist University, Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services
“Hospitality: the best way to grow a business in today’s marketplace.”
Editor’s Note
Tim Norrell is in these pages because of a question he asks businesses: customer or guest. He has worked in sales and service since the 1970s, at Zales, at Pitney Bowes, through his own firm and now at a Chick-fil-A in Springfield, and he says that when he taught sales he was teaching hospitality. The editors were persuaded by the specifics he brought: the 1-star reviews that fell to two, the rocks on his desk, the keys in the compactor. He also tells the day his own subject made him angry, and what he did next.
