Five ways to better connect with your customers or stakeholders

Something that has really got under my skin during my working life is the fact that many people who work in the business of influencing consumer behaviour do not have a theory of what persuasion might be, or how and when it works. 

I like to think of ‘behavioural economics’ as the science (and art) of human choice, a guiding set of principles that help to explain why we make the decisions we do. To shamelessly pilfer the words of American neuroscientist David Eagleman, it is concerned with “why we don’t think the way we think we think”.

This is of vital importance to anyone in business. So much of what we think about why people – including our customers – make the decisions they do is erroneous. 

Here are five tenets of behavioural economics that can help make your customer communications more compelling…