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Yesterday, Josef Schneider from Pyramid conducted a small LinkedIn live interview with me on the topic of how we stay in touch with our customers during the pandemic. What are our plans?

Networking and customer visits were a focus topic for us for 2020. We had planned to have even more personal contact with our customers in Europe. We are even in the process of building our own Jarltech Event and Training Centre, with a large kitchen, stage technology, a beer garden, bar and lounge. Hopefully we are not building in vain, since nobody knows what the future holds. Thankfully, the centre is large enough that, in the worst case, work can be done while maintaining distance. Of course, when you look at it realistically, there will probably not be any gatherings of large groups of people before May or June, if vaccines are available everywhere.

We are inviting people to attend local events again at the end of the year, however, in small groups, without great travel distances and with more distance than we would prefer.

Many customers categorically turn down visits, yet we have more visitors to our campus again. For the record, it's not many though. Instead of 20 business meals a day throughout Europe, we currently only have 1 or 2, on average.

One reason for the visitors in Usingen is our own restaurant in the city centre, because we have 7 separate dining areas. This way, you can go out to eat without guests coming in contact with each other, and you can air out the rooms when you wish. That should be pretty safe.

Right at the very beginning we sent our customers care packages, with all kinds of Jarltech gimmicks, such as energy drinks, candy, sunglasses, and the like. With our Jarltech webcam cover we have also found a place for our logo on many of our customers' notebooks.

In additional to traditional video conferencing (which everyone has had more than their fill of), we have also conducted »remote launches« with some of our customers. Pizza delivered to the customers' office and then we ate together via video connection. Yes, it is (and remains) just a crutch. It was much more fun having a wine tasting or after-dinner drinks together.

Another important component was the virtualisation of our Showroom. This way, at least visitors are able to see the most important products in our industry during a virtual tour online.

We are also currently developing a format for structured web meetings with our customers, short presentations with figures about the particular customer relationship. But it needs to stay exciting, short and to the point. We will definitely not annoy anyone with a 20-page PowerPoint presentation.

The only thing left for us to say is that you are also cordially welcome to visit us in person. We will inform you (and pamper you) at a high level, with the required distance and freshly disinfected. :)