At the surrounding booths, sellers were greeting customers, shaking hands with old friends and business partners, and making sales.

FORBES: Building Relationships for Your Business

The Schachters lived and breathed their work, actually living above the store and personally greeting customers and inspiring their staff.

FORBES: Of silk purses and sows ears

Stelios put in 100-hour weeks doing everything from greeting customers to dashing out to buy garbage cans at the local cash-and-carry.

FORBES: Proving Papa Wrong

He goes up to the jet-bridge and stands at the open door of the plane, greeting customers and calling out the name of his intended catch.

WSJ: The Tarmac Express: A Porsche to the Plane

After winning the auction last week, Dempsey made an appearance at a Tully's near Pike Place Market, shaking hands with workers and greeting customers before visiting other stores.

MSN: Judge: Tully's Coffee to go to Dempsey's group

One sign of progress can be found in internal scores that measure how well employees interact with customers, by greeting them when they walk into a branch, or addressing them by name.

WSJ: Citibank's Overhauled Retail Strategy Shows Uneven Results

In November Tiny Prints, which ships 1 million customized greeting cards a day during the holidays, began offering customers the option to print a Tango Card directly inside Tiny's cards.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The New York company launched Paper by Paperless Post in October after customers requested a way to get its electronic greeting cards and invitations in a more old-fashioned way: On actual paper.

WSJ: Paperless Post defies digital strategy with Crane

You don't speak the same way to your partner, your family, your colleagues or your customers so Libon lets you sort your contacts into groups, each group hearing a different greeting message.

ENGADGET: Orange brings Libon to Android, adds picture messaging to iOS version