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The following story is told by Erik Darmstetter, the CEO of Sales By 5. Sales By 5 is a company which specializes in helping clients grow their businesses.

Our client, Blue Clover, decided to launch a “high touch” customer service theme to their company. By making it a part of their own company’s culture, they would set the stage for what “high touch” actually is and will now make it easier to deliver to their own clients.

During the development stages of this project, Sales By 5 created a “high touch” magnetic chart which measured outstanding service by the Blue Clover firm as remarked by their clients.

With only 48 hours to go before we would launch our ideas to Blue Clover, we decided to put together a genuinely “high touch” event so the Blue Clover employees could experience this first hand and become truly inspired.

Here's what we did to get a "Wow" from our client with very little time.

The best part was that Blue Clover had no idea what we were doing, they just trusted us.

We prepared and held the event at our Sales By 5 office Building. We had asked the Blue Clover employees to park in the rear where they were greeted by a valet service we had hired for the day. The valet held special signs welcoming our clients. Along with the special signs we had made, we also included badges with their names and company logo on them. As their cars were parked they were then greeted by a hostess who personally escorted each Blue Clover employee to the elevators where another welcome sign was placed to personalize the experience. Once inside the elevator, they knew to go to the fourth floor by the logo that we placed next to the fourth floor button. As the elevator opened, they found a trail of blue clovers leading them to the conference room where another giant sign welcomed our guests.

Our conference room was decked out with a “Vegas-high touch” theme which included brochures of the hotels they would stay in, matchbooks and playing cards on the walls, Vegas show displayed everywhere, and of course, dice on the table. Once everyone arrived, breakfast was served!

During the course of the day we had them break in to teams and play various games with prizes and we had a treasure hunt where they had to find their company logo hidden throughout the entire building. We were happy as we watched each person get so involved in the games and having a great time. Shortly after lunch, we had a massage therapist arrive and each employee received a relaxing chair massage. While this was happening, we had each person’s car washed in our back parking lot and one of our men took pictures so we could quickly put it into our power point presentation which was about to begin. Our clients were blown away as they saw pictures in our presentation of their vehicles getting washed right there on the spot. They were excitedly yelling, “hey that’s my car??!!” and “What’s going on here??!!”

We explained to our guests that this entire day was designed to help them experience what “high touch” really means. We concluded by hosting a happy hour in the lobby of our building with everyone invited. We watched our clients leave happily as our valet handed their keys back to their newly clean cars.

Did it work??? YOU BET! Their magnet board is filled with magnets which represents each clients remarks on Blue Clovers exceptional service they provided. The entire program was linked to their annual goal which is to go to Las Vegas. A specific amount of magnets is set as a goal each month and each time they exceed this goal, Hard Rock casino cash was distributed to each employee for use once they arrived in Vegas. In the first quarter of 2007, Blue Clover exceeded their goals by 4 magnets (which represented client’s remarks) by their original goal of 44 magnets.

AWESOME JOB BLUE CLOVER & Sales By 5!

From The DiJulius Group, May 23, 2007 newsletter: http://www.johndijulius.com/archiveMay2307.htm