what is your understanding of engagement in the current market?

I think engagement has become much wider than before.

It used to be easier to see. A customer came into a place, spoke to someone, received a service, bought something, joined an event. You could almost see the relationship happening in front of you.

Now it is much more spread out. It may start with search or content, then continue through payment, delivery, messages, reviews, customer service, loyalty, social media, a physical visit, and then someone else’s recommendation.

People also know more now. They compare more, read more, and move on faster. So engagement is not just about contacting people. It is about giving them enough reason to stay interested, trust you, and come back.

engagement is a word that now means many different things across the people-facing sectors — sometimes a metric, sometimes a campaign, sometimes a relationship. when you sit down with a new client who says they want to improve their engagement, what do you first need to clarify about what they mean?

I would first ask what they mean by engagement. Do they want more people to notice them? Do they want people to return? Do they want more spend, more participation, more loyalty, more referrals, more time on the platform?

Those are not the same problem.

Sometimes a customer still looks active, but something has changed. They still visit, still spend, still respond, but they are less interested than before. Maybe the service has become too generic. Maybe the contact is too much. Maybe nobody remembers what happened last time.

So I would first try to understand what is really missing. Is it attention, trust, habit, usefulness, confidence, or a proper reason to come back?

where does your own thinking about engagement come from? which experiences, projects, or observations have shaped it most?

From moving between different worlds and being sensitive to what lies beneath customers’ behavior — the system underneath. Particularly in China, payment, platforms, logistics, content, messaging, services, and social behavior are closely linked.

Luxury has also been a good training. I do not really see engagement as one industry topic. I see it as the point where culture, service, data, place and trust meet.

the instinct to treat the customer as an ongoing relationship rather than a completed transaction is not universal. what does that instinct require of an organisation — in terms of structure, culture, decision-making, and the relationship between functions like marketing, service, and operations?

It requires a company to connect what it knows with what it does.

A company can have a lot of customer data, but the customer still has to explain themselves again. That happens all the time. So the data is there, but it has not become useful in the real moment.

Marketing may know one thing. CRM may know another. Service may know about the complaint. The frontline may know the real story. But the customer does not experience those as separate departments.

So the question is not only whether the company has collected more information, but whether the right person can use the right information at the right time, and still make it feel natural.

which are the problems that jeopardise this type of approach?

Pressure is one. When revenue is under pressure, companies often contact more, offer more, push more, and initiate engagement. But more contact does not always translate into better care.

Fragmentation is another. The customer may move through app, venue, payment, loyalty, service, and follow-up, but inside the business those functions may sit in different teams.

People also read the numbers too quickly. Someone comes back, spends, or responds to an offer, and the business assumes the relationship is strong. It may be. Or it may just be convenient, habitual, or driven by that offer. You still have to look closer.

when an operator gets this right — when they actually treat the customer as an ongoing relationship and survive the pressures that pull against it — what are they doing? and what does this mean at scale, where a small top layer of members typically concentrates the highest value?

They do not assume all valuable customers want the same thing.

In 2023 , with one company i was working for, we had expanded into seven European markets, both online and physical. A customer in Tallinn was not the same as a customer in Milan or Munich. Online customers were very different from people who visited physical shops. With events, you can offer amazing access — tickets, boxes, dinners, trips, meet-and-greets — but this still does not mean the customer is interested in engaging. Some people love that access. Some are private. Some only care if it is the right team, the right city, the right timing. So the work is not simply we have something nice, invite the VIPs. It is more like, does this person actually care about this?

The tier structure is real, but people talk about it too simply. The top twenty percent is often cited, but in premium environments that is still a very big group. You may have a wider premium layer, then a smaller real VIP layer, then a very small top group where one relationship can carry enormous value. That top layer cannot be managed by CRM alone. You need people, discretion, access, and judgement.

But even at the top, people are different. Some love the physical place — the room, the food, the atmosphere, being known when they arrive. Others are much more private. They may be high-value, but they do not want visible attention. That is where the work becomes more delicate. You may know someone is valuable, but you still need to know what kind of attention they actually want.

what separates customers who become genuine advocates from customers who simply transact repeatedly? is that distinction designable, or does it depend on factors outside the operator’s control?

A repeat customer comes back because something works for them.

An advocate is different. They almost take the place into their own story. They bring friends, they talk about it, they want other people to see what they have found.

This is a real challenge. Often we are not only selling a product or a service. We need to give people a reason to visit, to understand a place, to try a product, so that they feel the experience was worth the visit.

That is where advocacy begins. Not when people simply return, but when they feel interested enough, or proud enough, to introduce the experience to someone else.

what do customers actually want from commercial engagement, in your experience? has that changed over the past decade?

I think people want the business to focus on the right things.

Not everything. Not in a way that feels too familiar or uncomfortable. Just the things that make the relationship easier — what they asked for last time, what went wrong, what they prefer, or when not to disturb them.

People also have less patience now. They know they have choices. If the experience feels careless, slow, or too obviously automated, they move on.

Good engagement does not need to be loud. Sometimes it is just the right message, the right timing, or someone remembering the detail that matters.

we can distinguish between engagement-as-metric (the engagement rate, the kpi), engagement-as-activity (the programme an operator runs), and engagement-as-relation (the substantive ongoing connection between two parties). which of the three is most underused in commercial practice, and which is most overused?

Engagement as metric is overused.

Open rates, active users, visits, and spend are useful, of course. But they should not be treated as the whole story.

On the other side, what is underused is the record of substance — preferences, behaviour, who customers came with, what they liked, what made them return. Those observations allow a clearer customer picture.

Data helps people serve better and remember better, but it should not replace the relationship itself.

the issue also makes the case that substantive engagement builds belonging over time — the felt experience of mattering to a group, and of the group mattering to you. does that argument hold in the commercial register, or does the word belonging point at something only non-commercial operators can really build?

It is a softer kind of belonging.

It is not family or faith. It is more conditional. But in hospitality, luxury, wellness, members’ clubs or private-client environments, people can feel that a place fits their taste, identity, rhythm or status.

That does not happen because a brand says community. It happens because the evidence repeats: the customer is remembered, the environment is right, problems are handled well, and the service is consistent.

I would be careful with the word belonging, though. In a commercial setting, you do not own that feeling. At best, you earn a small part of it over time.

the line between attentive engagement and intrusive engagement is famously thin. from your experience, what disciplines, habits, or limits keep operators on the right side of it?

Recognition is sensitive.

A message feels attentive when the customer understands why they received it and feels it serves them. If it only serves the sales calendar, it feels intrusive.

With very high-value customers, discretion matters even more. Status, access, spend and reinvestment cannot always be explained openly. People may compare treatment, and the team has to handle that carefully.

Good engagement should make the experience easier, not make the customer feel watched.

ai is increasingly woven into commercial engagement — personalisation, predictive recommendation, conversational interfaces. from your view, what is genuinely useful for sustaining relationships at scale, and what should operators be cautious about?

AI is useful when it removes machine-like work from people — data entry, notes, segmentation, reminders, timing, churn signals.

If AI helps with that, people can spend more time on judgement and service.

But I would be careful about using AI to replace the human layer when the human layer is the relationship.

how has digital changed commercial engagement over the past five to ten years — and where has it fallen short of what was expected?

It has made engagement faster, more measurable, and less forgiving.

The weakness is that digital can show a lot of behaviour, but it does not always explain the person. More activity may mean interest. It may also mean confusion, frustration, risk, or habit.

So the next stage is not just more tracking. It is people understanding the behaviour better before they act on it.

most engagement programmes were designed inside one cultural and regulatory context. when you advise an operator trying to extend engagement across borders, what travels well, and what does not?

The need for recognition travels. The form does not.

People everywhere want to feel seen and respected, but what feels warm in one culture may feel too much in another. What feels efficient in one market may feel cold somewhere else.

China shows a different expectation of continuity because the commercial environment is more connected. Europe has different expectations around privacy, contact, service, and trust.

So the principle may travel, but the behaviour has to be local.

what is one assumption about engagement that your eighteen-plus years of work has most challenged?

The idea that engagement can be fully engineered.

The real moment of engagement still happens inside the customer.