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Internet Of Things And Customer Retention: How The Former Helps The Latter?

June 24, 2020head Image

Introduction

Today, the Internet of Things is one of the popular digital solutions in the market. Its popularity has led to its quick expansion and today, more digital devices are available. The rapid expansion of IoT in this arena has affected businesses in many ways. IoT is said to play a key role in inventory management, data sharing, and enhanced efficiency, productivity, and security. Moreover, businesses can leverage the data collected through different IoT devices to enhance customer experience through personalization. The marketing landscape in businesses is now getting changed with the rapid growth in IoT. For the same reason, marketers and brands are now looking for new strategies. Apart from helping with improving sales, IoT implementation at the business level helps improve customer experience, thereby increasing customer engagement.

There are a few effective tips which can help the business or brand increase customer engagement and the same has been explained below:

1. Checkout without checkout lines at stores

A new concept has been introduced by Amazon named Amazon Go . It has been introduced with the aim to end the long waiting line of customers at the cashier’s desk for checkout. The Amazon Go Grocery store combines IoT sensors, machine vision, and a mobile app to ease up shopping for the customers. So all that the customer needs to do is to download the Amazon Go mobile app before entering the store and browse for them. Once at the store, they can collect the items and then leave. This way, customers will have an idea of the total bill amount before they actually pay. So, based on their budget, they can either take or keep back the items on the aisle. So, with what is left in the shopping bag, you will be charged through your Amazon account.

This way the customer is free to leave the store once they have taken the items meanwhile, on the other hand, Amazon will start processing your bill. It will even start collecting the data based on your purchases so as to gain future insights. This information will help the store to guide the shoppers towards their favorite items within the store or offer personalized coupons to be used at their future purchases. With time, such systems will analyze the shopping behavior and list of the customers, and based on that will alert them when any of the items go on sale or are out of stock.

2. Coffee on the go –better self-service

Think about a smartphone app that will order you the morning coffee, saving you the time you need to wait in a line and place an order at the counter. This can be extremely helpful to those people who are hurrying in the morning to leave for office or college. Such an app will send you an alert message when you are about to reach the cafeteria and even ask you suggestions based on your preferences. The user can go with the suggestion with a single click or quickly browse through other options. In short, the order can be placed and paid within a few moments. So by the time you will reach the cafeteria and walk to the counter, your coffee will be already waiting for you.

All this has been made possible by the combined use of technologies like AI-based agents, location-based services, use of sensors, and predictive analytics. This arrangement definitely has its benefits like no time is wasted in explaining your order, no need to stand in long queues, no need of looking for your wallet, etc. Above everything, this ensures long-term customer loyalty- why go for other options when you have an IoT-enabled café at your service!

3. Improved experience during sight-seeing at attractions

Recently, Disney World came up with a new technology introduction called the MagicBand . It makes use of RFID technology along with long-range radio so as to communicate with a large number of sensors. It then easily streamlines data to hundreds of systems in real-time. In short, the whole place gets converted into a huge, single computer offering a magical experience to the visitors.

Just by swiping through the network of sensors placed in the park, the visitors can let the IoT-based system to their current position, what they want, and what they are doing. The wearable bands here even act as credit cards, hotel keys, FastPassess, tickets, and much more.

Using this wearable you get to set reservations for some attractions. Whenever the visitor swipes the band at any ride, the data related to the visitor gets to the operational team in real-time. The data will let the operations team decide whether they need to have enough staff deployed at the next attraction or not.

Visitors get to enjoy their best out of Disney World trip. They don’t have to look for tickets or carry cash for their visit, worry about carrying luggage or look for the shortest lines. This way, your luggage will reach your hotel room just by the time you will reach there. Additionally, if you happen to visit a restaurant within the Disney premises, then the restaurant staff will recognize you and will greet you with your name. So, you can place your order on the app before you actually reach the restaurant and get it straight away once you reach there.

Last, but not least, the wearable device will keep on registering your experiences at every attraction and every store.

4. Real-time data for insights

By making use of IoT at the company level, they will be able to gather data in real-time which can then be used to build effective strategies. Right from tracking products to managing unit functions, with IoT, you can easily get real-time access to such data which will help you serve the potential customers with better services.

Moreover, you can place sensors on the vehicles that come under the logistics to offer the customers real-time updates about their shipment. You can even place the sensors on the products transported to the customers. Thereby the update on the product will be delivered to the customers directly and they will not keep calling you frequently for an update. This way the whole transportation process will get simplified for you as well as for your customers. Such kinds of different use cases of IoT will help you in delivering excellent customer experience.

5. A higher level of personalization

When it comes to IoT implementation in CRM, it needs a lot of information to work well. CRM collects a lot of data and this helps the business to learn more about customer behavior. Based on the received information you can tailor your interactions with customers for effective results. Moreover, understanding your customers’ behavior will help you come up with targeted campaigns that are highly effective and can help you get more ROI.

IoT gets you to access customer data in real-time, which you can use to make decisions regarding building campaigns.

Now from the customer service aspect, they will be able to have much more data available about the customer and based on the flow of products, may even already know what the issue is. Such a thing helps the team to know the issues quickly and resolve it for the customers at the earliest.

6. Change your marketing strategy

Through the right implementation of IoT, you will be able to collect information regarding which customer base will be interested in your products or services and can prove to be valuable assets to your business. This way you can focus all your marketing efforts on such customer base rather than wasting it on people who have less or no interest in what you have to offer. This way, IoT boosts the efficiency of your marketing department and let them deliver their message to the audience, who are more receptive.

7. Works well for customer retention

Now you will be able to spot the users who have made lesser visits to your store just by tracking different connected devices. This information is very important when you are focused on achieving customer retention. You will also be able to know the products which the customers are no more interested in. So to bring them back to the stores, you can offer them special offers and discounts.

8. Personalized communication

Just like every other aspect of a business, IoT is said to play a key role in improvising communication. Right from understanding customer behavior to operational management, you will get to generate important data for your business through IoT. By using those insights, you will be able to increase customer satisfaction through personalized communication. When you fix sensors to products, you will get back some data indicating its usage patterns. You can benefit from such data to establish personalized communication with your customers. Based on the information that you have collected through IoT, you can suggest certain products to the customers or even encourage them to use some specific features that come with the product. Such kind of personalized interactions with customers, make them feel valued, and this way they get to have an emotional attachment with the brand or the business. The overall customer experience gets better through an excellent connective action. You can pass on the collected data to your sales and marketing teams and ask them to come up with personalized messages that will be relevant to the customers.

9. Higher digital security

Users are very keen on stressing digital security and what it achieved at any cost. Phishing, hacking, and identity theft is on a rise and so customers want to be sure that their personal information is safe within your business website or application. Just like other technologies, there are some risks associated with IoT but, it works towards offering a safer digital environment to secure the information of users.

The business that implements IoT gets to monitor things in real-time because it offers a wider reach of internet connectivity. So in case you find anything wrong, your team will be able to respond to the issue immediately. Apart from that, IoT lets the businesses to make the process of identification quite better and reliable by making use of biometric sensors and IDs. When you implement multiple layers of digital security in your IoT application for customer service, they will feel safer with their information in your hands.

10. Effective inventory management

Customers are demanding and in such a competitive time, they need their product to be delivered at the doorstep at the earliest. In order to ensure such a thing happens, the business needs to manage its inventory efficiently. With IoT, you can be sure that you will never run out of your resources as IoT helps you manage your inventory well.

The use of radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) is one of the top IoT technology trends in the market today. Such kind of each tag comes with its unique digital footprint along with encoded data which displays information regarding a said item. The information includes model, type, color, weight, or even batch numbers. This way it becomes quite easy for the team to track their inventory as well as offer updated information about the products to the customers, leading to improved customer experience.

11. Improve services or products

IoT can be used by businesses to collect data on various products and then this data can be used to produce new ones. You can use the information to know which part of the product can be renewed for production use. The collected data analytics will help you improve customer services by taking appropriate actions. The implementation of IoT here makes data collection and information sharing quite easy for businesses. The workers get to gain from the effortless digital landscape as it offers them the needed knowledge and tools to succeed in the business.

IoT keeps on monitoring your system in real-time and so makes it easy for the team to identify the issues even before they become one. With IoT, your teams will get a chance to take a proactive approach instead of reactive one and this helps them boost efficiency and productivity.

12. Building customer loyalty

By offering discounts and rewards, IoT helps companies to work on data insights in real-time. Say, for example, let’s look at the CITO research which was carried out a few years back on Coca Cola consumption. As per the report Coca Cola collected data from its different vending machines and came up to the conclusion that there was an increase in its consumption within the college campuses before specific TV shows were aired. So based on what they learned, they were able to build targeted rewards so as to build brand loyalty, push consumer action, and increase cross-promotion.

13. Improved overall experience

IoT helps you improve the overall business experience by improving your relationship with your customers. You can use such an opportunity to develop better products, detect the need to carry out maintenance, come up with personalized communication, etc. Ecommerce businesses can use IoT to improve their sales and flourish in the process.

Final thoughts

Internet of Things is going to stay in the market for a long time. This is one of the reasons why businesses are moving towards IoT. Apart from helping businesses with increasing customer engagement, it helps to strengthen security, enhance productivity, and simplify communication. So, as a business entity, if you are still undecided about using the Internet of Things, it is time you make a clear choice in its favor!

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