In recent years, the world has experienced a lot of technological changes. There have been inventions that have continued to shape how humans interact and do things, and one of these technologies is the Internet of Things (IoT). The use of IoT is rapidly growing, which makes more and more smart devices to be introduced. By 2030, experts predict more than 125 billion objects would have been connected through IoT.
While other technologies have come and gone, IoT technology is here to stay. All indications show this technology would be used for the foreseeable future. IoT helps provide solutions to security threats by solving problems before they arise. One of the most popular places where IoT is applicable is the business industry as it helps companies improve their service delivery to create a better customer experience.
In this article, you’ll learn all you need to know about the Internet of Things, including what IoT is and how it can help deliver a better customer experience. To provide a better customer experience, you also need to work with a customer experience consulting firm. Working with such will ensure you provide better customer support. Continue reading.
What Is The Internet Of Things?
The Internet of Things is a system of interconnected devices sharing data -possibly without human intervention- through the internet or through a dedicated network. The devices are connected through wireless WANs (Wide Area Networks), LPWANs (Low Power Wide Area Networks), LANs (Local Area Networks) or PANs (Personal Area Networks) using communication technologies such as Cellular (4G/5G, LTE-M, NB-IoT), LoRa, Sigfox, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, near-field communication (NFC)…These devices can be an animal equipped with a biochip transponder, a person with a heart monitor implant, or a vehicle with sensors, among others.
How Can IoT Help Deliver Better Customer Experience?
IoT can help deliver a better customer experience through the following:
1. Better Customer Care
In the highly competitive business world, better customer care is an important aspect to consider if you want to remain thriving. That’s where the Internet of Things comes in as it can help provide satisfactory customer service.
One of the major problems possibly hinder you from providing better customer care is faulty equipment or breakage of essential tools or equipments. But with IoT-connected devices and sensors, you can predict problems likely to affect your equipments and you can be alerted in real time in case of failure, thus allowing you to minimize downtime.
For instance, if one of your equipment is about to break down, the embedded IoT sensors and intelligence can alert your technicians about the issue. When the problem is foreseen, it eliminates any downtime that could occur.
2. Inventory Management
In the digital world where everything has gone online, you need to provide products to your customers as soon as they make orders. Delivering products in real-time helps you remain ahead of the competition. It also allows you to win a bigger share in the market.
To ensure you quickly deliver products to your customers and eliminate stockouts issues, you need to manage your inventory. IoT technology is there to help manage your stock.
The IoT uses radio frequency identification tags with encoded data displaying information about a particular product regarding their model, batch number, color, etc. These details can help you track or monitor the movement of your products. Not only can this help track your inventory, but it can also provide updated data about the availability of items.
Also, as earlier noted, IoT uses sensors that can help you know when the inventory of your products gets low. This allows your system to make automatic orders to ensure you don’t run out of stock.
3. Personalized Communication
You can also use the Internet of Things to collect usage data and provide personalized communication to your customers. For example, an embedded IoT engine can store and send data from your customers after using your products, which helps you understand their usage behavior. Then, based on the data collected, you can adapt your communication to individual customers.
Also, through the knowledge acquired through the collected data, you can suggest relevant products that best meet customers’ needs. Doing so can help improve customer experience because they’ll feel cared for.
4. Product Optimization
To optimize your product, you need to collect data about its usage. Using Internet of Things technology is most probably the best option get all the data you need, understand the usage of your products and help improve where necessary.
You can also use the collected data to update your customers about the performance of your products. This helps provide better customer service, which translates to improved customer experience. It also allows you to build strong relationships with them.
5. Improved Security
Though the internet comes with many benefits to businesses, it’s prone to several challenges. One of these challenges is security. Hackers use the internet to steal information, which poses a great danger to businesses and other organizations.
Businesses need to ensure their data is safe and isn’t easily accessible by unauthorized users. Though online thieves are trying to use modern technologies to stay ahead of businesses, the IoT can provide a safer environment to store your information through the usage of dedicated networks, specific security protocols or security modules embedded in the IoT engines.
In addition, it allows you to monitor all activities on your equipments in real-time. Through IoT technology, you can notice any unusual activity on your systems and respond to it immediately.
IoT also allows you to use remote surveillance or ID verification. This ensures only legitimate people can access your sites and equipments. In addition, this makes sure your customers’ information is safe and improves their experience, allowing them to continue engaging with your business.
Takeaway
Better customer service is a must if you want to remain competitive as it determines how customers will interact with your business, which can help generate more revenue. If your service isn’t good, you risk losing customers. However, you can avoid that by integrating modern technologies like IoT into your business systems.
Internet of Things is a modern way of improving your business customer experience. Through real-time data collection and interactions, it helps provide better customer care, better and more adapted products, inventory management, security, and much more to improve customers’ satisfaction. Consider the ideas mentioned here as you improve your business operations.
