The concept of ‘love languages’ is much-discussed in and around Valentine’s Day, with it outlining five contrasting ways in which people like to receive and express their love to one another. These include words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service and gift giving, with every person supposedly having a dominant ‘love language’ that resonates best with them.
While the concept is primarily for romantic relationships, what if we applied these principles to brand-customer relationships, too?
Indeed, many brands may be falling short by communicating with customers via the wrong ‘love language’, thereby missing opportunities to show they appreciate, value and understand their audience base. That may include delivering promotional messages that are generic and poorly targeted, ‘love bombing’ them with excessive ads or communicating through the wrong channels.
This Valentine’s Day, we’re exploring how brands can not only better understand their customers, but apply these ‘love languages’ to their own digital engagement tactics. Brands that do so successfully will ultimately strengthen their brand-customer relationships, build trust and deepen loyalty.
But, how can a brand find out what makes their customers tick in the first place?
The magic formula for customer understanding
To build a detailed understanding of every customer – and thereby recognize their individual ‘love languages’ - brands must collect the data consumers have willingly shared with them. This not only respects user rights, but provides the most valuable, relevant and accurate customer insights for brands to leverage.
From there, brands can build incredibly detailed unified customer profiles in their customer data platforms (CDPs), ensuring insights aren’t stuck in a silo. Once brands understand the unique dynamics they have with their customers, as well as their individual preferences and needs, their ‘love languages’ will no doubt become apparent, too.
So, let’s take a look at how brands can best speak their customers’ different ‘love languages’…
1. Words of affirmation
When it comes to brand-customer interactions, ‘words of affirmation’ is all about providing hyper-tailored, personalized communications that truly resonate with the intended recipient.
And we’re not just talking about sending ‘Happy Birthday’ messages, or chatbots addressing customers by their first name. This is about context-driven insights delivered to customer service and marketing teams, including customers’ purchase and interaction history, interests, accessibility needs and communication preferences. This could include knowing a customer’s product preferences for garment sizes, colors and delivery options. Personalized marketing messages and recommendations could then narrow in on this subsection of products.
Having this intelligence at brands’ disposal not only demonstrates how they understand their customers, but makes for a far more meaningful, compelling and relevant experience for recipients, encouraging greater engagement. It’s all about creating micro-moments of recognition.
2. Quality time
When it comes to customer service needs, brands need to take the time to fully resolve customer queries and help them navigate any complaints or challenges they may face. With our research finding consumers spend a whopping 1.5 days a year on ‘brand admin’ tasks, it’s no surprise that 47 percent see such actions as unnecessary time drains.
Simplifying interactions from initial outreach to resolution should be a brand priority, as well as ensuring contact center agents fully understand customers’ interaction history and the full context of their complaints. This will avoid scenarios where customers have to waste time repeating themselves with multiple agents.
By streamlining and simplifying brand-customer interactions and investing in customer experience, customers can feel reassured that their valuable time is being respected.
3. Physical touch
While digital customer engagement arguably reigns supreme nowadays, we cannot forget the value of in-person experiences for many customers. In fact, physical spaces and human-led experiences offer a unique opportunity for customers to immerse themselves in a brand while delivering a feeling of community and connectivity.
In the last year, we’ve seen leading brands reinventing physical retail spaces, creating spaces of beauty, discovery and wonder, offering playful, human and tactile experiences that truly resonate with their audience.
Sephora, for example, launched its ‘We heard you like stripes’ takeover in Newcastle last year, which was both playful and perfectly targeted - and saw overnight queues. Brands should therefore consider their physical offerings for this ‘love language’.
4. Acts of service
With consumers busier than ever, many seek ways to simplify their lives and reduce the mental load from mundane, brand-related administrative tasks. From being put on hold, to lengthy resolution processes, these tasks often consume too much time, creating frustration and brand resentment. A study from Twilio found almost half of consumers (49 percent) consider brand admin to be a significant chore.
An act of service from a brand could be as simple as removing the time and energy burden unfairly put on customers in these brand interactions. Brands should provide proactive support and automated assistance to help find solutions for customer issues as efficiently as possible.
Businesses could also offer simple yet incredibly helpful value-adds, such as appointment reminders and delivery updates. These proactive messages make customers’ lives easier, and are greatly appreciated acts of service.
5. Gift giving
Many customers find it hard to resist the charm of an unexpected gift or offer, but for some, it is the silver bullet to loyalty. Countless brands are looking for ways to capture consumers’ attention, and surprising and delighting them by going beyond their expectations is a great way to do that.
Whether it’s rolling out loyalty programs for long-standing customers – not just discounts for new customers – or offering unexpected, tailored gifts based on the customers’ past buying behavior, exclusive perks and thoughtful gestures are likely to leave a lasting positive impression for those with this ‘love language’.
The takeaways: Love lessons
While the five distinct ‘love languages’ each play a unique role in strengthening brand-customer relationships, personalization should be at the heart of every brand’s customer engagement strategy. Although customers may benefit from elements of all the ‘love languages’, Valentine’s Day offers an ideal opportunity for brands to reflect on how they can best tailor their engagement tactics on a personal level. And gaining a deeper understanding of their customers is a critical first step to doing so.
Quick links
- Measuring the magic flywheel of customer love with Fred Reichheld
- The CX Network guide to building emotional connections
- The Australian Open is transforming fan experiences with generative AI
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