The more complex our businesses become, the greater the distance is likely to be between your employees who produce goods and services and the individuals to whom those goods and services are likely to be sold—the end users.

Think of support staff in call centers or fund-raisers for nonprofits or customer service representatives. Yes, they’re talking to your customers or contributors on the phone, but they know almost nothing about the party at the other end of the line. New research has shown that even very brief person-to-person contact—a 5-minute one-on-one—between an employee and an end user significantly improves the employee’s motivation and productivity.

Wharton School of Business’s Adam Grant, an associate professor of management, ran an experiment in 2007 with some colleagues that illustrates the fact. Call center employees were trying to raise funds for scholarships to the University of Michigan. Grant and his team afforded some workers to meet with students who’d received past scholarships. The employees had only 5 minutes with the students, but they were able to ask about the person’s studies. Over the next month, Wharton reports, those little chats made a big difference: Those callers spent more than twice as long on the phone and raised their weekly average of donations from $185.94 to $503.22.

In a follow-up study, Grant focused on lifeguards at a community recreation center. Some were given case studies about lifeguards who had saved lives, while others were given testimonies from lifeguards about the personal benefits of their work. No surprise—the case studies were 40 percent more motivational. And the combination of learning the beneficiary’s needs and meeting him or her personally is even
more effective.

A group of students was assigned to edit cover letters submitted by fellow students, along with their résumés, to a career center. Half of the editors were allowed to meet the students as they dropped off their packages and make small talk, while the other half simply tackled the paperwork. Both meeting a jobseeker and learning some of his or her personal circumstances was even more powerful, leading to a 20 percent greater amount of time spent on each cover letter than that spent by other editors.

Think about the implications for your business: How easy is it for your employees to assess the impact of their work on clients or customers? How many chances does each have, perhaps once a year, to meet and talk with a client or customer? The memory of such an experience can influence a whole career.