As Heathcliff would say: don't use AI to replace human connection, but to remove the friction that prevents it.

The festival of Saint Valentine's came upon us once again at the weekend, having its origins as a liturgical celebration of an early Christian saint named Valentinus. A popular hagiographical account of Saint Valentine states that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. According to legend, during his imprisonment, he healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius, and that before his execution he wrote her a letter signed ‘Your Valentine’, as a farewell.

To celebrate the day, Susan and I popped to the cinema to see the latest rendition of Emily Brontë’s much-vaunted 1847 literary classic Wuthering Heights on a two for £3 plus £1 for a coffee Sunday Seniors deal. Bargain. It is an extraordinary Gothic romance about passionate love defying all adversity. The tale of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is etched into my mind as a study book on the English Literature O Level Syllabus, 1978, and of course the warbling, poetic Kate Bush song.

Emerald Fennel’s version starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie had mixed reviews, and this zeitgeisty hot take strayed from the original. The film’s trailer pronounced it to be inspired by the greatest love story of all time, to which I can only scratch my head and say, You what mate? She's obviously never had a dog.

The story? Ill-fated lovers torn asunder, yearning across bleak northern vistas, desire so powerful it transcends the grave - and this Heathcliff character sounded like a bit of me, a heady mix of Mr Darcy's brooding, glowering allure and Rhett Butler’s arrogant, magnetic charm. Honestly, there's a lot of similarities.

Returning from Liverpool, Earnshaw brings with him a dirty, ragged, black-haired child called Heathcliff, and sets into motion a tale of destructive passions. The book’s two locations, the genteel Thrushcross Grange and the wild Wuthering Heights, serve as matching backgrounds to the characters of their occupants, as they struggle to gain the upper hand in their relationship. 

It’s complicated. This cast of misfits ended up dropping dead from all manner of fevers, childbearing, alcoholism and general malaise –We had swathes of phonetic mind-curdling dialogue to ensure the viewer knew they were Northerners. Good job I previously lived in East Lancashire so I could translate the thick West Riding brogue, such as T’ maister’s down I’ t’ fowld, Yah dunnut loike wer company, there’s maister’s and, a personal favourite, There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.

Cathy initially marries Edgar Linton, the wealthy bachelor next door, a more sensible match than the social misfit Heathcliff, who, after disappearing for years after Cathy spurns him, reemerges dramatically out of the mist as a strutting cock-of-the-north version of Mr. Darcy sporting a fab coat, a hoop earring, and gold tooth. 

Elodi had a gruff Yorkshire accent apparently developed in his bath, but let the record show that the character of Heathcliff, as Emily wrote him, is not a romantic lead, more a Grade A a***hole: a nasty, spiteful abuser. He’s the deeply problematic toxic ex that we keep liking, somehow convinced maybe he wasn’t really that bad, after all. (Spoiler: he is.)

Their doomed romance has about as much in common with love as a mouldy loaf hiding at the back of the breadbin. Of course, we’re all going to have different opinions of this endlessly maudlin tale, but Fennell has radically reinterpreted this multi-generational family saga and portrays Brontë’s tale of doomed passion, obsession, and resentment as a montage of two folks who can’t keep their hands off each other.

There is lots of explicit bodice ripping. Heathcliff at one point grabs Cathy by her corset in order to hoist her up one-handed to kiss her, which is the kind of logistically impossible move that makes women swoon and blokes rush to the gym to work on their upper body strength. I also couldn’t help notice how often the characters get caught in or choose to stride out into the rain. Yorkshire weather.

Heathcliff is the embodiment of a dozen conflicting, contradictory desires — a hulking brute who is not that far off Frankenstein’s monster but who in other times is a wounded, sensitive soul tormented by longing, or a smirking, dominant seducer who appears to know everything the women he encounters want.

As the closing credits rolled, I wondered what lessons there were from the romance of Heathcliff and Cathy in terms of a startup venture: how do you find, win and keep a partner lends itself to developing and sustaining customer relationships. 

It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? As AI becomes more capable of mimicking human behaviour and speech, the authenticity has never been more valuable. Automation builds efficiency but you can sense when a chatbot is simply running a script or automated loop.

To build authentic customer relationships, you shouldn't use AI to replace the human connection, but to remove the friction that prevents it. Customer attraction and reducing churn are essential elements of startup growth. When churn happens, they’ve lost the romance.

With the adoption of AI, the definition of customer intimacy has shifted from knowing your customer to anticipating them. Traditionally, intimacy was built through human relationships and manual personalisation. Today, it’s about using data to provide value so specific it feels like magic, not surveillance.

But I sense a paradox developing. As we use more AI tools, the demand for authentic connection has never been higher. With AI delivering a better customer experience in terms of more efficient processes, it’s more important to also use AI to develop your relationships in a genuine, authentic and sincere way, to avoid a sense of being robotic. So, what does a framework look like?

1. Transparency as a policy Authenticity starts with honesty. If a customer is talking to a bot, don’t try to trick them into thinking it’s Sarah from Support.

• Label your AI: People appreciate bots when they are fast and helpful. They resent them when they feel deceived.

• The human touch: Always provide an immediate, obvious way to talk to a human. Forcing someone through five layers of AI prompts is the fastest way to kill trust.

2. Personalisation v Personal AI is great at personalisation, using data to suggest solutions, sending timely updates and feedback on reviews, but humans provide the personal touch in terms of empathy and shared experience, validating customer frustration, adding context to the situation and being sincere in the moment.

• Write like you speak: If you wouldn't say a sentence to a friend in a conversation at a coffee shop, don't put it in an automated email script. Not We are leveraging data to optimise your experience, rather We’re working hard to make this easier for you.

• Proactive service: Moving from reactive support to predictive intervention. If AI detects a pattern that is leading to churn, it reaches out before the customer even knows there is an issue.

• The contextual conversation: AI remembers every interaction across every channel, ensuring the customer never has to repeat themselves.

• AI Grooming: When using AI to draft content, always edit for ‘salt’. AI is often too bland. Add a specific detail, a touch of wit, or a personal observation to break the robotic flow.

• Segment of one: AI moves your customer intelligence to a ‘segment of one’, not just a demographic grouping, allowing ongoing, relevant personal engagement.

3. High-Tech, High-Touch Use AI to handle the ‘boring’ stuff so you can focus on meaningful stuff.

• Automate admin: Let AI handle password resets and basic FAQs.

• Invest the savings: Use the time and money saved to empower your staff to go off-script. An unscripted, five-minute conversation about a customer's specific needs is worth more than 100 formatted automated messages.

• Is this helpful or just fast? Speed is a commodity; empathy is a premium. Use AI to be efficient, but use your people to create the intimacy. Use data in ways that feels helpful, not invasive.

• The Feedback loop: Using AI to wall off human contact entirely is flawed. True intimacy requires an escape hatch to a real person for complex or emotional issues.

• Algorithmic bias: If your AI treats a customer unfairly based on flawed data, the relationship is broken instantly. AI can create vulnerability in a relationship.

4. The Empathy Test Ask yourself Does our AI language acknowledge the human emotion behind the request?

• If the customer is frustrated: Don't just give a solution; validate the hassle first.

• If the customer is excited: Match their energy. AI struggles with genuine enthusiasm—humans excel at it.

5. Show ownership When you mess up, dont use canned apologies.

• The human response: An authentic apology includes: what happened, why it happened, and how we are fixing it.

• No passive voice: Use I am sorry we missed this, instead of It has been brought to our attention that an error occurred.

6. High-Fidelity Feedback Loops In tech, we’re working on it is a black hole. Authenticity requires specific, human-to-human updates.

• The Guideline: When a bug occurs or a feature is delayed, give the "Why."

• The Script: Hey [Name], we hit a snag with the database migration that we didn't see coming. My team is heads-down on a fix right now. I’ll personally update you by 4pm today.

7. Predictive churn modelling: Use AI for monitoring sentiment and the health of relationships in real-time. AI can be a crystal ball, identifying micro-behaviours:

• The Action: use NLP to scan support tickets, social mentions, and even the tone of chat transcripts. Use ML tools to identify patterns like reduced login frequency, or a sudden stop in using a core feature

• Intimacy move: If AI detects frustration or a cooling in tone, trigger an automated but highly personal check-in from a human.

8. Nudge: hyper-personalised re-engagement Generic We miss you emails are spam. AI allows you to be specific:

• The Action: Dynamically generate content based on their past successes.

• The Message: Hey [Name], last month you saved 4 hours using our automation tool. We noticed you haven't set up your workflow for this month—want a 5-minute teardown on how to optimise it?

• Own the Friction: Instead of Feature request noted, try: I see how that workflow is clunky for you. I'm passing your specific feedback to our product lead.

Summary: Walt Disney said it best, Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends. Creating love between your startup and your early adopters and customers can help scale positive word of mouth that’s priceless.

Creating a customer-focused culture is a strategy that should not be overlooked. Most businesses are failing when it comes to the customer experience, which is your opportunity to swoop in and enchant those same customers into falling for your company.

In this AI landscape, human intervention becomes a premium luxury. The most successful brands use AI to handle the routine work so that their human employees have the time and emotional bandwidth to handle the moments that require genuine empathy and creativity.

AI should be the concierge that handles the details, allowing the brand to show up as a  person when it matters most. Remember, like Heathcliff it’s seduction not speed dating, you want a relationship not a transaction. You need to ask for that first date and get it, because if you’re not romancing your customers, who is?