Untapped opportunity – six best practices for igniting CX with IoT
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Local marketers are missing huge opportunities to streamline CX with the Internet of Things. A new report outlines six best practices for gathering insight and value from IoT data.
This article was sponsored by SAS to let readers know about TDWI’s ‘Six Best Practices to Ignite the Customer Experience With IoT’ report »
Seriously, what’s up with the Internet of Things (IoT)?
We’ve all heard the hype – by sundown tomorrow, another 1.2 gazillion devices will be connected to the internet. And they’re all producing data as valuable as gold. Or is it oil? It’s hard to keep track.
But if you’re not using IoT to improve the customer experience, you’re not alone. Although it is driving concrete results in industries like energy and manufacturing – where streaming sensor data alerts engineers to failing machine parts – most marketers are yet to cash in. Here in Australia and New Zealand, we’re particularly slow on the uptake. Frost and Sullivan reports that Australia and New Zealand rank lowest in IoT-enabled customer experience maturity in all of the Asia Pacific region.
While only 15% of those surveyed have implemented IoT, 50% agree that it is important for enhancing CX. This number will only continue to rise as technologies like analytics and AI – which enable marketers to derive value from IoT data – become more accessible and user friendly.
IoT data + analytics = CX
Most marketers agree that improving CX is a top priority. And to do this, we need tools like data management, customer intelligence and advanced analytics to understand customers and reach them with more relevant and personalised offers. These analytical tools run on data – and they become more powerful and accurate the more data you feed them.
So where does all the data come from? Increasingly, it’s coming from connected devices like smartphones, smart TVs, wearable devices and digital home assistants. If you think about it this way, it’s easy to make the connection between IoT and improving CX. The trick is harnessing the data and using it to drive better marketing campaigns.
TDWI’s report provides clarity with six best practices:
- Use IoT to derive value from the expanding number of CX touchpoints. Forget focus groups. IoT data can provide instant insight on customer actions, allowing marketers to improve CX through personalisation and real-time activity. For retailers this could mean analysing shopping data to stock the right products, while for telecoms it could mean automatically allocating network resources based on predicted usage.
- Calculate a CX score for each customer. Forget focus groups. IoT data can provide instant insight on customer actions, allowing marketers to improve CX through personalisation and real-time activity. For retailers this could mean analysing shopping data to stock the right products, while for telecoms it could mean automatically allocating network resources based on predicted usage.
- Meet new customer expectations with IoT data. Today’s consumers have more buying options than ever. Stop relying on generalised content to appeal to a new generation of shoppers. With the volume and variety of IoT data, marketers can perform granular analysis to target customers with confidence. Marketers who win the race to uncover hidden insights in the data will also win the race to enhance their CX.
- Use IoT data as the foundation for AI initiatives. For marketers, AI can provide automation and personalisation at scale. This is powerful, futuristic, career-making stuff. But AI algorithms often need huge amounts of data to be accurate. With data as fuel, AI programs can detect hidden insights, so marketers can react to more discrete and anomalous situations, thereby improving CX.
- Map the customer journey via IoT-enabled channels. Providing relevant content throughout a buyer’s journey is the CX mandate. Increasingly the customer journey includes connected gadgets that allow for single-click product orders or star ratings. Therefore, it’s now important to think like the modern customer who relies on dozens of gadgets and use this information to enhance your digital marketing campaigns.
- Extend digital CX to physical experiences. Providing relevant content throughout a buyer’s journey is the CX mandate. Increasingly the customer journey includes gadgets that allow for single-click product orders or star ratings. Therefore, it’s now important to think like the modern customer who relies on dozens of connected gadgets and use this information to enhance your digital marketing campaigns.
As marketers, the avalanche of data streaming from connected devices gives us many opportunities to better understand, target and retain our customers. But the data alone won’t provide a winning customer experience. According to research by Vodafone, 82% of adopters agree that “IoT isn’t a standalone technology, and it’s intrinsically linked to analytics, AI and other critical digital initiatives.”
Benefiting from IoT data clearly relies on your organisation’s ability to use analytics and AI to transform that data into a better customer experience.
For tips on winning with IoT, plus case studies, best practices and the latest research on using it to improve CX, read the TDWI white paper ‘Six Best Practices to Ignite the Customer Experience with IoT’ »
Image credit © Vasin Leenanuruksa via 123RF