Why IoT is Important: Redefining Customer Experience in Industry 4.0

Customer experience is not just an aspect of business anymore. It is the entire business. With the multitude of brands out there, standing out is paramount. Leveraging the latest technology is one way to do it.

Enter IoT; the Internet of Things. IoT is a means to an end. It is a mechanism allowing businesses to provide smart and proactive customer centricity. And this is reflected in the staggering growth that this paradigm is experiencing. Let’s understand this through certain numeric figures.

• The vaticination for global IoT expenditure by 2023 is $1.1 Trillion. Marrying this to the prediction of an expected holistic economic value of $3320 Billion renders IoT a force to reckon with. Additionally, the global network of billions of devices that has propped up
   makes this an unavoidable source of data. And we all know how valuable data is. The more, the merrier.
• Glancing at the market, we can see that the global IoT market is at a valuation of $478.36 Billion and is expecting a CAGR of 26.4% from 2022 to 2029. Even more impressive is the fact that the market will reach $2465.26 Billion by the end of the forecast period.
• It is estimated that by 2030, there will be 15.9 billion interconnected devices which is 3X of what was accounted for in 2019.

The numbers scream promise. Businesses have already started adapting. Perhaps the best use case is yet to be discovered. And that is what we will deal with here. We will take a look at how customer experience can be crafted around this phenomenon.

Industry 4.0 and the Call for Customer Delight

Simply put, superior customer experience can be enabled through proactive and predictive practices. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it yourself,” enlightened Steve Jobs. And that holds so much prominence in today’s business environment.

IoT can enable businesses with a 24-hour, 360 degree view of the customer. For instance, say that you sell cars. And that your cars are integrated with IoT. Driver data will keep pouring in. You can update your customers with the exact status of the car, You can arm them with information that they did not even know they needed. Tell them what spare part they would require in the next 2 months. If their homes are connected, switch on the lights for them as soon as they arrive

Hubspot estimates that 66% of customers expect the companies to understand their needs. It delights them. 72% of them will engage in word-of-mouth as soon as this delight is delivered. To aptly do this and exceed expectations, businesses must have insights to the “moments of truth” of each individual customer.

A satisfied customer may come back to you. But a delighted customer is a walking advertisement. This is where IoT development shows grit.

IoT and Customer Experience

IoT bridges the gap between a satisfied customer and a delighted customer. Let’s understand through some examples.

• Derek Myers of Coca-Cola rightfully boasts of a “digital path to purchase, payment and loyalty.” For the company, this is nothing new. Back in 1982, the company had around one-third of their vending machines connected to the internet. We are familiar with the delight-strategies of the brand. Be it the extremely personal “name on the can” exercise or this particular one, the brand thinks ahead.
• Over 1 lakh of their machines now accept mobile wallets. They are looking to enable a functionality where students can pay for their drinks with student IDs. And from the business end, Coca-Cola has partnered with Salesforce to gain data from each of these touchpoints.
• All of this is what majorly contributed to their value of $268.4 Billion.
• IoT is also known to skyrocket business uptime. Bill Donlan of Capgemini asserts that “Assets that are self-aware can request service, order replacement parts, and report data on usage patterns that can then be used in prediction-based models to identify/predict needs for service resulting in higher up times and greater asset reliability.”
• Capgemini has experienced massive amounts of data pouring in from flights after a trip. This mammoth information is effectively translated into intelligence in factories. Professionals can process this to know the exact status of each machine. This enables them to engage in enhancements in a timely manner without wait in for the entire system to crack down completely.
• From a business point of view, this capacity across verticals and industries is what enabled Capgmini to conquer a cap of $26.27 Billion.
• Now we have discussed the advantages of IoT enablement both from consumer and business perspectives. At the end of the day, this seamless integration results in customer delight. So how does Orion eSolutions come into the picture?

Summing Up

Orion eSolutions is a proven mammoth when it comes to digital transformation and tech-enablement across a multitude of industries. Our approach is flexible. This flexibility makes IoT development and integration seamless. Let’s get in touch to see how well this can work for your business.

FAQs:

Question 1: What are the major challenges of IoT implementation?

Answer:  Security, volume and complexity of data are the main concerns right now. However, with the emergence of more sophisticated analytic tech and through widespread adoption and uniform usage, these will be tackled.

Question 2: How does IoT influence the daily lives of customers?

Answer: Users are looking for automation and simplification of daily tasks. Through smart cars, smart homes, and smarter connected tech, they are looking to have a tech integration that can simplify the daily routine they have chosen to follow.