We all know the importance of building meaningful relationships with our customers. Consumers want to know the products they buy are reliable. They want to see value from the services they pay for. They want to know the companies they’re doing business with are trustworthy, helpful and honest. Whether it be through social media, sending out newsletters and surveys, hosting webinars and seminars, or other activities, most (if not all) companies employ some sort of process or platform for engaging with their customers. With the emergence of new technology and the rise of smart devices companies are now positioned to take customer engagement to the next level.
What if you could help solve your customers’ problems before they have them? What if you could make meaningful recommendations and provide targeted guidance to your customers based on how they’re using your products? What if you could always be connected to your customers? You can, with the Internet of Things.
Based on data from the State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016 report from Verizon, IoT is having a large impact on how businesses are engaging their customers. Here are a few key points taken from the report.
For me, one of the more interesting statistics was that in the public sector 81% of early movers believe citizens increasingly expect them to offer enhanced services using data from IoT. Using smart devices and sensors, data can be processed practically in real-time so that decisions can be made on the fly to enhance services. This information can then be relayed back to cloud servers to provide insight and drive policies to further enhance services while cutting costs. Soon customers will come to expect these types of enhancements, and companies that don’t follow suit may lose customers to competitors that are early movers. With more and more private sector companies across an array of industries leveraging IoT to engage their customers, are consumers going to begin expecting services enhanced by technology from all businesses? I believe many already do and that the trend is on the rise.