Customer Experience in the era of “THE INTERNET OF THINGS”

Customer experience is a pretty common term these days. Everyone claims they do it, technology companies say they have the solution to achieve it, and the story goes on. If we Google the term “Customer Experience”, this is what you get:

“Customer experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. This interaction includes a customer's attraction, awareness, discovery, cultivation, advocacy and purchase  and use of a service.”

Let’s cut all the noise and look at this from a 30,000 feet perspective…

- Customer Attraction

- Awareness

- Discovery

- Cultivation

- Advocacy, purchase and use of a service

A customer experience can simply be an interaction with a company’s call center, or it can even be the simplest thing like a greeting you get when you enter a retail store. We all know that customer experience is important to sustain a company’s existing customer base and for business growth, but the question is ‘are companies & businesses ready for the next technological revolution which is already happening out there , are they ready to take the customer experience to the next level ?’ ,In the modern age, customers are connected & information is at their fingertips. With the ever growing technology revolution of mobility and ample access to the internet, the technology landscape has changed dramatically. This has created new challenges for business to think about their customer experience strategy & to leverage the power of this new digital world which is connected to everything.

‘THE INTERNET OF THINGS’- the so-called next technological revolution which is already transforming our world to something that could be right out of a sci-fi movie.

What is “THE INTERNET OF THINGS”?

“The  Internet  of Things  (IoT, sometimes referred to as the ‘Internet  of Everything’) is  the network  of  physical  objects   or   "things"   embedded[1]  with   electronics, software, sensors[2] and connectivity to enable it to achieve greater value and service   by  exchanging  data….

According to CISCO, 37 Billion new things will be interconnected by 2020.

[Image copyright (website - http://blogs.cisco.com/ioe/answering-the-two-most-asked-questions-about-the-internet-of-everything)?]

This creates an entire new experience for the consumer. Remember the Spielberg movie Minority Report from 2002? Below is a snapshot taken from an iconic scene of the movie.

Taken from: The Minority Report

Director: Steven Spielberg

Initial release: June 17, 200

Cruise plays the character of “John Anderson”, and the above scene shows Anderson entering a shopping mall; as he enters the shopping mall a holographic host greets Anderson and asks him how the previously purchased “tank tops” were? The host also introduces a few more products which Anderson might be interested in. Even though the entire hologram concept might be a few years ahead, the underlying concept is already prevalent in modern day businesses. It’s all part of the modern day customer experience professionals role to understand a customer’s preferences and to have holistic understanding of the customer.  Having a customer profile is the basic concept of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), but to take it to the next level requires a lot more innovation, and IOT (Internet of Things) plays a big part in this.

Nowadays customers & business are connected like never before. If we go back to the late 80’s & early 90’s, the primary communication channel between a business and their customer was the telephone, and to a lesser extent, email too.   But today, consumers are on digital channels such as social,   apps, and IM chat.  This creates an entirely new paradigm of personalized experience for customers. Clever businesses are now adapting to social networking to listen to what customers say, & to understand customer behavior. Technology giants who practiced CRM now focus on Social CRM. Businesses use Social CRM to engage with their customers digitally.

Everyone has heard of a smart watch. But what really is a smart watch? Apart from it giving us the time which it should do, it’s actually a miniaturized version of a smart phone.  It synchs up with your mobile device and  gives you certain notifications and summarized info. If we look at the practicality of the smart watch, one can argue that there is no need of a device category of this nature; it proceeds similar (and usually less) functionality as a smart phone. But it has created an all new medium for Customer Experience. Now businesses can create their own smart watch apps to enhance their customer’s experiences. The launch of the apple watch and watch OS2 is a good example for this.

[Image taken from apple special event- 2014 September]                                

Apple has now introduced ’Apple Pay’, its proprietary virtual currency platform to the Apple Watch. Along with loyalty module embedded to it

The era of the smart watches open new doors to make a customer’s life more convenient

 [Image copyright https://marketoonist.com/shop/loyalty] 

As shown in the cartoon drawing above, the nightmare of carrying loyalty cards is long gone; customers can simply hold their smart watch or smart phone and redeem the points.

[Image copyright:  http://www.capital-moments.com/apple-pay-launches-in-the-u-k/]

Airline passengers can now check-in with their smart watches. This cuts down all the paper work which is involved in the process, and  makes life easier for the passenger.

  [Image Taken from Android wear]

This not only creates a new experience to the customers, it also helps businesses to track their customers individually, to know more about their customer, to identify their individual preferences & buying patterns. This is only the tip of the ice berg - other possible use cases could be something along the lines of your running shoes being able to identify your health status and triggering notifications accordingly trough the nearest supermarket via an app, and the goods are delivered right to your door step. The supermarket keeps a track of the customer’s buying patterns and provides loyalty points. These loyalty points will then be notified via one of the customer’s smart devices such as a smart watch or smart phone. Or maybe your t-shirt would be able to identify certain illnesses or viruses which enters the human body through body heat, heart-beat etc, via special sensors. And this information will be pushed to your family doctor via an app. The app will be able to automatically set appointments and so on. Some of these use cases might have already being implemented in a real world scenario, and some will be implemented in the near future. But this is where the future is headed. Every device, every home appliance, every one of our favorite gadgets are going to be connected to this gigantic hub where all of these “things” share information. The information will be grabbed by smart analytical tools to provide predictions and patterns. The world is going to be a lot smarter.

In the future we cannot simply say we are providing a Customer Experience or a CRM solution by just providing a customer profile or a 360 Degree view; we will definitely need to think about IOT and the new digital landscape. We will need to think of new concepts with the smart devices connect to IOT,. Enable all customer interactions as one omni channel & to create a true modern day customer experience.

[Image copyright: http://blog.payvision.com/cross-border-ecommerce-in-china-omnichannel-and-localization/] 

Calvin Hindle