The Internet of Things, or IoT, is one of the fastest-growing trends in the global business community. It brings endless possibilities to enterprises and ways to grow and prosper beyond the wildest expectations. Wireless technologies swiftly change the world of products, turning them into the space of services.
Along with the changes in ways of large and small businesses, customers’ expectations also shift considerably, along with the customers’ behavior. Understanding the nature of this shift is essential for effective communication with customers.
The main aspect of the changes in customers’ expectations is that customers now demand a good experience more than they demand things. So it’s not about “what” anymore; it is about “how”, and “how” is about the connectivity which IoT cloud solutions provide.
In this article, we will look at how the customer experience can be enhanced with IoT and review essential aspects of developing a product with an IoT-enhanced user experience.
How can IoT improve the customer experience?
According to Capgemini research, 77 percent of customers expect to increase their use of touchless technologies shortly, so customers are willing to be engaged by IoT products. The Internet of Things, a multi-faceted phenomenon, can find applications in many aspects of customer experience, so let’s review some of them.
Besides being an obvious boon to the process of IoT deployment, high-level Internet of Things connectivity significantly boosts the enterprises’ customer engagement effectiveness.
IoT-embedded devices ensure a constant stream of helpful information about the specifications of their use and notifications about a wide range of potential issues. Using this data, a company can significantly increase the effectiveness of customer communications with personalized messages.
IoT devices with gateways installed in physical locations can provide data about the various parameters of a particular location that customers visit. This information can be subsequently analyzed to draw useful conclusions about the patterns of customer satisfaction.
Predictive maintenance is another aspect of enhancing the IoT-enabled customer experience. Installed IoT applications can provide constant automatic monitoring with instant reactions to the arising issues.
Special algorithms react to each particular on-premise condition with an appropriate warning and messages sent out. Such a solution can also be connected to a human resource management system, effectively appointing the right specialist to any specific issue.
Wearables such as smart watches or smart home appliances are directly connected to the customer experience, creating and improving it as their primary function.
Client support is one of the most important aspects of forming the customer experience, and here IoT also brings great possibilities. For example, IoT-enabled systems can often detect and report a particular problem much earlier than a customer could, creating an opportunity to deal with it preemptively. A swift response can ensure that the customer never learns about the problem’s existence, influencing their overall experience greatly.
A more sophisticated way to improve the customer experience with IoT is using AI-enabled IoT platforms. Such complex solutions perform massive customer data analyses over prolonged periods, highlighting the device features they use the most and the least, which helps improve these devices.
Alright, we’ve clarified how IoT can improve customer experience, but how would a company approach creating an IoT product design with a strong focus on customer experience? Let’s see.
Creating a CX-focused IoT product
We’ll highlight some things to remember while creating the IoT device design for improved CX.
Build upon what you’ve learned
Products already in use generate a significant amount of data that can be used to create new products. Learn about customer experience with them, improve weak points and capitalize on strong sides.
Make personalization available
Customers just love tuning products to their preferences, so providing them with such a possibility would ensure a great customer experience. Besides, intelligent products can be personalized in more ways than just the interface.
Empower the user
The more the customer feels they’re in control, the more satisfaction they tend to get from using the product, so it is a good idea to make them feel in control. Remote control over the UI is an excellent tool for that.
Optimize the usage of gathered data
Here’s what IoT devices do best — gather information with their sensors. This information should be used to tailor the services to the customer. Moreover, devices can be tuned to respond to specific signals based on the information gathered automatically.
Device-to-device Principle
The more machine-to-machine interaction your product allows, the better the customer IoT experience tends to be.
Simpler is Better
If using your product involves a complicated course of training, chances are the customer experience would not be too positive. However, IoT was created to simplify life, and simplicity of use should stay among the main goals of any IoT product.
Use AI Wherever Possible
Modern AI solutions can boost customer satisfaction incredibly because of their flexibility and usefulness. Besides, they add a “cool” aspect to any product, which is another way to increase customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
IoT is a great tool that can provide a daring developer with multiple opportunities. Moreover, the main principles of IoT are so satisfactory for the average customer by their very nature that using IoT to increase customer satisfaction is almost always a successful strategy.
The global trend in customer experience enhancement right now is personalization. If you make your customer feel valued and important, they will respond in kind, with increased loyalty and return rates, and IoT is a sure way to form such connections for many enterprises.
