DATA
5 steps to enhance CX with IoT analytics
by James MacDonald: Senior Business Solutions Manager of SAS in South Africa.
Customer experience (CX) today has evolved from the transactional relationship engagements of the past. The focus is now on creating ongoing value for both customer and brand. But building a sustainable and ongoing relationship with customers requires ease-of-access to the data and superior analytics that can provide differentiated value.
People have come to expect instant access to just about everything. Much of the spotlight is falling on curating experiences that save customers time and money, whilst delivering brand value that they will enjoy coming back to. Home deliveries, personalised shopping, predictive marketing based on previous purchases, the list goes on. The truth is that analytics has become non-negotiable in striving to deliver relevant experiences. Of course, this requires access to good quality real-time streaming data that is increasingly being provided by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices.
As consumers increasingly live within a digital eco-system including wearables and engage with other intelligent connected devices, the data points that weave together a more comprehensive picture of preferences, lifestyle and needs, increases in orders of magnitude. The challenge and opportunity for brands is to leverage this responsibly and ethically for creating brand trust and affinity.
To this end, analytics is reinventing the operational landscape for businesses as they strive to improve everything from the response rates of marketing campaigns to delivering offers and services that are more tailored at an individual customer level. Companies are becoming far more open to adopting this more holistic approach to the customer journey. Data-driven decision-making through analytics can result in a richer experience for customers while also improving the quality of marketing efforts of organisations.
As such, there are five things to consider when it comes to enhancing the customer experiencing using IoT analytics:
1. Know what the customer expects
Customers want personalised experiences based on sensors, associated data, and processes all centred on fulfilling their immediate, individual needs.
2. Three-step analytical framework
By integrating data, analytics, and IoT, businesses can identify the ways to build long-term customer value. There are three components critical in this regard. The process starts with a customer making a request that demands a response. From there, the business must apply a level of understanding through contextual analytics and the history of the particular customer engagement to identify the most relevant course of action. Finally, the company must engage in a timely, convenient, and relevant way that gives right-time results to the customer.
3. Understand how context drives relevance
It is vital to make sense of the data generated from networked devices. In doing so, a brand can access real-time context to shape the decision-making process in delivering relevant experiences to the customer. This personalised context, based on an increasingly complex data profile (both historical and real-time) is vital to meet the need of the customer at the point of engagement.
4. Keep analytics at the core
IoT devices fuel networked analytics that make sense of all the information throughout the value chain. This ultimately enables networked decisions to create the best areas for customer engagement.
5. Consider industry factors
Finally, every industry vertical will have a different use case scenario for optimally benefitting from the IoT analytics done at the edge. The central theme is to understand with analytics and then, act on that to make the best decisions possible.
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