IoT and Personalization: A Marriage Made in Heaven
Who doesn’t want insane traffic and qualified leads for their business? If you want a sure-shot tip to engage customers on your website, here it is: Understand the customer’s journey. Everything kicks off in the right direction if you understand the intention of the customer. The customer of today is intelligent regarding what to buy and what to expect from the brand. You have IoT and personalization, which together are a marriage made in heaven.
If a customer purchases your product, the transaction is just one part of the grand equation. To retain the customer and entice them to buy again, you must stimulate the customer on every touchpoint. The small interactions that customer does with your brand can occur on many levels:
- Attractive landing pages
- Exceptional Customer Service
- Inbound marketing and SEO optimized pages
- Integrating social media with other marketing channels
There is so much data to consider if you are willing to optimize the journey of your customer.
This is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Good because there is a plethora of data available at your disposal, but just the data can be overwhelming.
Instead of relying on one-off data points on your customer journey, focus on creating a holistic experience for your customers. Advanced IoT technology can help in increasing sales. There are, of course, pros and cons of the IoT world. However, as a real human being, I would highlight some points that can help in improving the lives of customers.
IoT and personalization: made for each other.
IoT and personalization are like two sides of the same coin. One deal with data and second enables the brand to engage customers. When we talk about IoT, we are talking about the incredible opportunities that open up ways to interact with the customer purposefully. A fantastic change which we haven’t realized before. These small and straightforward interactions with machines are changing the perception of customers regarding brands.
Just imagine a world where everything connects with an IoT device. From controlling the temperature of your refrigerator to calling a repair guy right from your smartphone. These ideas barely scratch the surface of what IoT can do to make personalization even more engaging and intuitive.
In a survey done by IHS, it was revealed that more than 18 B devices are already connected with the internet and by the year 2020 the number will swell to 75 B.
Building meaningful and personalized experiences.
There is no doubt about one thing, personalization and IoT is a match made in heaven. Everyday devices collect our data and customize our experiences. From watching a movie on Netflix to ordering food online, everything we do over the internet is stored, analyzed, and inclined to create a custom experience for us.
The audience of today desires a timely, relevant, and tailored experience. When done in the right manner; these experiences don’t just generate solid leads, they leave an imprint of good memories in the heart of the customer.
Today every brand is stressing on creating a clairvoyant user experience.
Previously, our data was used against us. We were blanketed with unrelated, annoying advertisements that give no meaning to us. IoT devices changed everything. The IoT devices gather data from us and create a personal experience for us. In a mind-boggling report by ZDNet, we came to know that there are more IoT devices than there are humans on the planet.
IoT devices use geolocation to recommendation neighborhood discounts. Monitor the heart rate of a patient and signals the doctor if anything feels unusual. Marketers are already using these remarkable insights to understand customer’s intent and predict their buying pattern. The information is being used to drive traffic and generate revenue, which is solely based on feedback from the customer.
IoT can ultimately help content marketers create likable content, website designers to develop gripping designs – which is precisely what customers are looking for.
Personalized Experiences Demand Transparency and Consent.
An online experience can either make you uncomfortable, or it can delight you. It depends upon the level of trust, transparency, and consent offered to you. When you visit a new website, you abstain from giving away your personal information. Your search for testimonials from customers. You imagine, what if my data get leaked out? Upon high-profile breaches, we all know that our data is not that safe online.
The IoT devices have already started gripping the attention of users. Not long ago, Burger King activated Google Home devices in living rooms and kitchen. Although Google was not happy about it, this experience was something new for people. For this reason, marketers must be transparent and open as much as possible with their audiences.
What type of IoT data will be collected, and how will it be used? This will eliminate all the awkward surprises that the audience might get in the future.
As per MarTech Advisor, the data provided by the customer is the most valuable and useful information from a customization standpoint. The audience demand assurance that they can trust a brand. Trust is being earned by transparency and consent.
Eventually, the audience will realize that the IoT experience is actually understanding their needs, and also how the company will handle their personal information.
It’s about having a heartfelt dialogue.
One key element that makes personalization easy for IoT is a sincere dialogue. With IoT, there is a two-way opportunity to establish a meaningful conversation with the customer conveying the benefits of the brand.
We have already seen how Burger King leveraged the power of IoT to start a dialogue with people. Even those who don’t eat Burger King began talking about the advertisement. This is the type of content that customers want to see. The one that can engage them, create a personal experience for them.
Brands can easily take control of IoT data to give the audience a more personalized experience. In doing so, the brands will inform the customer that their voice, their preferences matter. Every brand must deliver content marketing experiences that offer more than just the product. The delivery is about understanding the core need of the customer and solving their real-life problems.
When the audience realizes that the trust is honored, they will more likely welcome all the future personalized experiences without any doubts.
Big Data is a helping hand for superior customer service.
The excessive information seems impossible to control, resulting in an extension of the customer service agent role.
For instance, in IBM, the title of a customer service agent is “super experts” based upon the amount of information they have to carry to deal with the customer. As an example, when the customer is off for a vacation, there are sensors in the home that will raise a warning signal when a leakage is detected. This raises the alarm to the operator, which then goes into action to solve the problem before it gets hard to handle.
The same strategy is used by Google to train its people. The IoT devices are taking quick decisions without involving the owner. The customer service reps are trained to interrupt the data from the sensors and tip off the relevant department to handle the problem. Moreover, in any case, the customer service agent can suggest an eligible government disposal program.
IoT can handle the massive amount of data.
Personalization doesn’t work if the data is not complete. A good thing about IoT is that it completes the missing data of the user.
Corporations are moving towards smart automation systems. From parking lots to shopping malls, everything is being automated. The human intervention slows down the processing speed. With humans, there is a chance of mistake, but IoT can handle innumerable data without making any errors.
Businesses, especially the e-commerce sector, are using IoT to its full extent. Giants like Amazon and AliExpress are using IoT devices to collect data, customize it according to the demands of the customers, and offer personalized experiences. IoT has not only changed the way customers interact with brands; in fact, it reformed the roles, skillsets of customer service agents.
In countries like USA, UK, and even Dubai once upon a time, some agents used to have the job of tracking the car number and locating the car.
With IoT in place, now the customer texts their license plate number. The camera look-up the vehicle and identify where the car is parked in the parking lot. A pop-up appears on the phone providing the quickest route to reach their vehicle. With this system in place, the need for a parking attendant is eliminated.
A simple app can show the people where their car is parked rather than asking people to guide them. Just like every other industry, IoT has its own set of challenges. However, on the bright side, the future belongs to IoT and how brands leverage the power of personalization.
It might not feel necessary at the moment to get hold of everything regarding, but on the long-haul, it is essential to get into it. Take time to learn and implement the system in your brand. Start small and scale big.
The more devices we are connected with, the better service we can get. The coming age is the age of advanced IoT. Customer service reps will be entirely replaced with devices to provide an exceptional customer service experience. Hiring and developing staff to do small stuff will become crucial as everything will be connected to the internet. The new technology is shaping the way we shop, browse, and connect with our friends. The only way to survive whether you are a web development agency or an e-commerce website is to follow the trends in IoT.
This article was written by Syed Hassan from ReadWrite and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.
