Have you read about the five love lan­guages? Dr Gary Chap­man says that these are the lan­guages that de­fine how we want to feel loved and ap­pre­ci­at­ed as in­di­vid­u­als. Be­cause per­son­al­i­ties dif­fer, the ways in which we res­onate with the love lan­guages used by loved ones, al­so dif­fer.

For those read­ers who are cu­ri­ous, the five lan­guages are Words of Af­fir­ma­tion, Acts of Ser­vice, Re­ceiv­ing Gifts (see­ing your­selves any­where as yet?), Qual­i­ty Time and Phys­i­cal Touch.

So, I be­lieve that while these lan­guages re­side in the per­son­al re­la­tion­ships do­main, there are love lan­guages that re­side in the cus­tomer do­main as well.

My picks for the five cus­tomer lan­guages are En­gage­ment, Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, Sim­plic­i­ty, Op­tions and Re­sults.

To­day, I’m just fo­cussing on En­gage­ment and the oth­er four will be high­light­ed in suc­ces­sive columns. En­gage­ment is about re­al­ly con­nect­ing with cus­tomers in a unique and per­son­al way.

When a busi­ness en­gages its cus­tomers, it be­gins to cut a path to per­son­al­is­ing and cus­tomis­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence in a way that best suits the cus­tomer. For ex­am­ple, if you are in the life in­sur­ance busi­ness, it is help­ful to de­vel­op pro­grams that en­gage cus­tomers around health and well-be­ing.

How about host­ing sem­i­nars with health prac­ti­tion­ers that ed­u­cate cus­tomers on their med­ical risk as­sess­ment and ge­net­ic pre­dis­po­si­tions, whilst sug­gest­ing mit­i­gat­ing prac­tices that can help them to coun­ter­act their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty? T

he big win­ners here are good health on the cus­tomer side and risk mit­i­ga­tion on the busi­ness side.

If you are in the restau­rant busi­ness, build­ing a din­er-pro­file data­base, es­pe­cial­ly for the reg­u­lars and log­ging their food pref­er­ences, al­ler­gies and even food­ie ad­ven­tures, is price­less. Your busi­ness can now be­gin to de­sign spe­cial ex­pe­ri­ences that en­gage and res­onate with your din­ers.

Al­so, why not cater to ve­g­ans and di­a­bet­ics who have dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing food choic­es that meet their needs and ad­dress their gas­tro­nom­ic con­straints? I can guar­an­tee that this of­fer­ing will be a win­ner.

So now you’re think­ing that cus­tomer en­gage­ment sounds like quite a bit of work and yes, you would be right. It is a lot of work, if you haven’t been do­ing it all along. For those busi­ness­es that un­der­stand the val­ue of cus­tomer da­ta and the sol­id ben­e­fits of us­ing cus­tomer an­a­lyt­ics to dri­ve de­ci­sions, the con­cern is not about time con­sump­tion, but about ex­trac­tion of da­ta that can be used to im­prove the user ex­pe­ri­ence.

The process of en­gage­ment starts with “cus­tomer dis­cov­ery” ac­tiv­i­ties that build datasets of rich in­for­ma­tion.

This means tru­ly be­gin­ning to un­der­stand your cus­tomers by dis­cov­er­ing de­tails about their hob­bies, the foods they pre­fer, their char­i­ty work, their as­pi­ra­tions as cit­i­zens, their fam­i­ly ac­tiv­i­ties, as well as when and how they make pur­chas­es.

In this way, a busi­ness can build a unique pro­file of each cus­tomer and tai­lor of­fer­ings in ways that make cus­tomers say, “I re­al­ly love how this busi­ness has tak­en the time to de­sign prod­ucts and ser­vices that mat­ter to me, in ways that mat­ter to me.” This is cus­tomer gold that can be con­vert­ed in­to rev­enue gold.

Now, some per­sons may think that col­lect­ing all of these “some­what in­ti­mate” de­tails is a lit­tle in­va­sive.

My re­sponse is, not if the in­for­ma­tion is col­lect­ed over time, as trust builds be­tween your busi­ness and your cus­tomer. It is not an in­ter­rog­a­tive ex­er­cise where the cus­tomer is con­front­ed and feels bul­lied by an em­ploy­ee who’s run­ning through a list of ques­tion­able ques­tions. No, it’s not so ster­ile.

Over time, as cus­tomers be­come more “en­gaged” they tend to be will­ing to re­veal more and more about their likes, lives, pref­er­ences and per­son­al de­tails.

The best way to start the en­gage­ment would be at the point of “on-board­ing” a cus­tomer, when he or she con­ducts the first trans­ac­tion with your busi­ness. Time should be tak­en to make this a unique and mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence, so that the cus­tomer feels at ease.

Re­cent­ly I had a re­al­ly great on-board­ing ex­pe­ri­ence at the new pass­port of­fice. Of­fi­cer AS en­sured that I was com­fort­able and ex­plained the process in a calm, pleas­ant man­ner. Sim­i­lar­ly, a wel­come note or pack­age, a cour­tesy dis­count, wel­come gift or spe­cial re­pur­chase of­fer can al­so work won­ders as an en­gag­ing and wel­come sur­prise.

Just think of it. A first time din­er at a restau­rant is asked about his or her food and wine pref­er­ences, al­ler­gies, typ­i­cal dessert choic­es and pre­ferred salt lev­el in the food. This in­for­ma­tion is stored in a data­base so that when­ev­er this cus­tomer vis­its, wait staff are able to speak con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly about food pref­er­ences and “in­di­vid­u­al­ize” the ex­pe­ri­ence. I like to think of this first sale as a first date with the cus­tomer. So just like on a first date, (the ones that go well), the cus­tomer should have such a mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ence, that he or she would want to get to know your busi­ness bet­ter.

Keep­ing your cus­tomer hap­py then be­comes your num­ber one pri­or­i­ty, whilst demon­strat­ing just how en­gag­ing your brand per­son­al­i­ty can be.

So as you be­gin your cus­tomer en­gage­ment jour­ney, re­mem­ber to nev­er let a first-time cus­tomer leave af­ter a first trans­ac­tion, with­out some­thing of val­ue that will make him or her want to re­turn as soon as pos­si­ble.