Stop ‘nudging’ customers and pay attention when they nudge you
Brands that ignore the small signs customers are unhappy will soon feel the financial impacts if they don’t respond.
It isn’t nice to be nudged. I’m talking about the physical kind here, the unmistakable human shove of body on body, shoulder on shoulder, accompanied by that indignant, self-righteous sigh, to let you know you have transgressed some kind of social norm in a queue or on a crowded train. Even pre-Covid, it would hit your defences like a low-level assault, arousing an awkward emotional cocktail of surprise, guilt and affront: ‘What have I done?’
It could be effective though, cutting through more viscerally than words to prompt you to move or adjust, perhaps with a meek smile or apology. It could also go wrong. Any sense that the assault was unjustified would be met by standing your ground, digging in, or even nudging right back: a high-risk human strategy lending some drama to low-stakes human interactions.
Nudges of the other kind aren’t anything like that though. I am talking now about the ones espoused by the proponents of behavioural nudge theory – or ‘choice architecture’, as it is sometimes known. Here, there is nothing so obvious or crude as a felt gesture – in fact, nothing sensate at all. The ‘nudge’ is mediated imperceptibly through the order of options in a list, or the way a question is framed, or the default setting for a standard decision.
