The 5 Love Languages of Your Customers

If you’ve ever heard of the 5 Love Languages, you’ve probably learned about them in the context of romantic relationships. Basically, love languages are how you prefer to receive and give love to others. Your personal love language is what makes you feel loved! It makes sense that this would normally be thought of in terms of showing love to the person you’re in a relationship with, whether in a romantic sense or with your other close loved ones, but today, we are going to put a beauty biz babe spin on this topic! We are talking about how you can use all five love languages to help develop and grow the client relationships you have in your beauty biz! The fact of the matter is that, everyone, yes EVERYONE, has a love language. I would even go so far as to say that most people resonate with all of the love languages to a certain extent although certain love languages rank higher on their list of making them feel the most loved. It’s a very interesting topic, if I do say so myself. What’s even more interesting, is that you can use this psychology to improve your customer service experience overall. Wicked COOL!

Let’s start from the top. What are the five love languages? In case you have never heard this term before in your entire life, or just need a refresher on what they are, here are the five love languages:

1. Physical Touch
2. Words of Affirmation
3. Gift giving
4. Quality Time
5. Acts of Service

Now that we know the topics we will be talking about, I’m going to break these down further so you can understand what they mean and how you can implement them into your business. P.S., while you read through these, keep in mind which one resonates with you the most! When you read through these you may think that they sound fairly straight forward in their meaning, but getting creative with ways that you can interact with the love languages of your clients to give them a better experience with you is the key to this conversation!

Physical Touch

As I said, this is pretty straight forward when you think about a romantic relationship in terms of what physical touch looks like. This could be kissing, hugging, holding hands, etc. However, obviously not every client you have will be a touchy feely type of person and if you get a sense that this may be the case (read the room LOL!), then it’s better that you make sure not to do anything that will compromise the comfort level of your client. I also want to preface this and say that if you are not a licensed beauty professional, such as an esthetician, you shouldn’t be touching your clients anyway depending on the state you live in. Definitely check your state board guidelines beforehand to make sure you’re staying within your limits as a service provider. Nevertheless, let’s talk about how you can use physical touch within your business. Including physical touch in your service may look like physically putting on barrier cream to your clients hands and feet or wiping the palms and nails at the end of the service. Although these are small forms of physical touch, they do go a long way with making the client feel taken care of.

Words of Affirmation

If your love language is words of affirmation this means that you love hearing and/or telling people how you feel about them; a.k.a, affirming them. For example, words of affirmation is one of my top love languages so I always make sure to tell my employees how much I appreciate the work that they do and verbally express my gratitude toward the role they play in my business. Words can go such a long way! When speaking to clients, you want the words you use to be sincere. Speak from the heart. Your client shouldn’t feel like you’re just blowing smoke up their booty and schmoozing them so that they come back! Compliment them on their shoes or the way their hair looks that day. Let them know with your words that you appreciate them choosing you to be their service provider.

Gift Giving

I LOVE to see all of you beauty biz babes implementing gift giving into your businesses. Everyone loves a little gift because it makes them feel appreciated and special that you would do something that’s thoughtful for them. For spray tan artists, you can send your clients home with a small sample packet of retail products that they can go try at home and then hopefully if they fall in love with any of those products they will order them or purchase them at their next visit. Setting up a loyalty program is also a great way to use gift giving. This allows your clients to feel like they are getting something extra special in return for continuously supporting your business.

Quality Time

This is another love language that is fairly self explanatory because obviously quality time means spending quality time with the person you care about, right? In terms of a client relationship, however, I chock this up to making sure your clients know that their time with you is important, valued and acknowledged. One of my absolute least favorite feelings whenever I walk into a salon is feeling like I’m being rushed! Don’t rush your clients. Make sure you’re taking your time during the appointment to be thorough and detail oriented, listen to their questions and concerns, go over their post tan care with them and then take the time to explain what products you feel like would benefit them the best! No one likes to feel like they are being an inconvenience to someone else’s time especially if they are paying for a service, so make sure that your clients understand that you respect their time and are happy to make the time they've chosen to spend with you valuable. 

Acts of Service

When you do something for someone or someone does something for you, this is considered an act of service. For your clients, this might look like, helping them put their hair net on, helping them take their sticky feet off at the end of the appointment so they don’t have to bend over and risk creasing their tan (big no!). This could also mean that you send a sincere follow up text after their appointment letting them know that you appreciate them coming in and seeing how their experience with you was. Simple gestures like this during and after your appointments can make a big impact on how you clients feel about your business and the service they just received!

How fun was that exploration of love languages!? I tell you, I think this topic is fascinating and the fact that it can be used to make your clients feel that much more special is even better. I know that I gave a few examples of how you can go about using love languages for your clients, but I want you to go about doing this in your own way! Make your client experience something that is unique to you and your business so that your clients feel like they are getting an authentic version of what you offer. The goal of this entire practice is that your clients feel effing phenomenal when they come see you! Customer service game on point, baby!

If you want all the details on how to implement this practice into your biz, I did an entire podcast episode on it so make sure to subscribe to the Beauty Business Babes Podcast on iTunes or Spotify!

Xoxo,

Kelly