From cars to air conditioning, fridges to fitness bands, there are few ‘things’ that the Internet of Things has yet to start infiltrating. They’ve even started entering business, where the potential for automation and connectedness sees your customer service reps being replaced by an email from your washing machine telling you to change your drain hose.
OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but there’s no better example of the potential for IoT in business than when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM).
The Internet of Things, or simply IoT, refers to the ability of any object or device to be connected to the internet. Take FitBit as a likely suspect– the bracelet reads your daily physical activity, turns it into data, and uploads it to your phone or online to show how active you were on any given day.
Now, imagine a less likely suspect being able to do the same thing, turning physical information into online data like the washing machine example above. How could this change the customer experience, impact your business, and what are the risks involved?
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The potential
Traditional CRMs rely on a give and take relationship between customers and their service reps. If a customer needs something, they pick up the phone, send an email, or start a live chat.
If a business wants something from a customer, they do the same. A good CRM will record all of these interactions and give reminders about how and when a business should contact a customer next.
With IoT connected devices, some of these touchpoints become redundant.
The car industry has been one of the first to embrace connectedness, and aside from enhancing functionality and safety, there’s also huge potential in the customer service department.
GM has talked about its future of connected cars, wherein diagnostic information about repairing the engine or replacing spark plugs could be instantly recognized and sent to the closest dealership. The driver rolls in, and without a mechanic so much as poking around under the hood to figure out the problem, the car gets fixed.
Extending that idea into the home, electronics giant GE has rolled out a line of connected appliances including washing machines and dryers that not only let you control devices remotely, but also help fix issues that you didn’t know you had, known as predictive maintenance.
For example, a yet to be released dishwasher will notify you if excess food is clogging up the load, sending you data directly related to the problem so that you can fix it before it becomes a big deal.
GE’s washer and dryer apps for its line of smart Appliances
The impact
It might be some time before every product is equipped with a network connection, but having an IoT friendly customer management solution could eventually become a deciding factor for a business choosing a CRM software to manage its product’s users.
Cloud solutions are the first step, which already offer inherently network-connected services. From there, mobile apps are a must. Some IoT devices already rely on mobile apps to function, like the Lockitron lock that unlocks your door with a mobile app, and people will reflexively look to their smartphones to help solve any problems they might have with an IoT connected device.
The Lockitron bolt and app
Practically speaking, the customer service rep’s role in using a CRM solution will change, but it won’t become obsolete. An IoT connected CRM can automate tasks like sending service updates for a product or recording customer interactions, but it can’t replace the role of the customer service rep in helping solve problems that only a human can fix.
A report by Jasper, an IoT service platform, describes how products will inadvertently become services with IoT. Bringing offline activities online means that managing these services will become as important as selling the products themselves, where the service could become the differentiator between a good ‘product’ and a bad one.
The risks
As with any other cloud-based service, having potentially sensitive customer data floating around in the cloud involves security risks.
CRMs should be secure given that they store customer data ranging from contact details to credit card information, but having more devices connected in a network means more opportunities for vulnerabilities and attacks, not to mention more data (activity and usage) for the taking.
Part one of a recently published security series by Data Protection Report outlines some of the security and privacy risks of IoT, including the race to market. For early adopters rushing to be first, security flaws could be overlooked or go unnoticed in the hopes of getting a product out faster than competitors.
Depending on the product and what it’s being used for, the privacy of this data also comes into question; health or spending data could mean big bucks for businesses.
The security risks are real, but the idea here is to wait a little longer to allow for product maturity that’ll iron out some of these security concerns.
A work in progress
The possibilities of connectedness seem endless in a space where predictions have put the number of connected devices anywhere from 25 to 50 billion by 2020. But we’re not there yet.
IoT is slowly starting to impact the way businesses work, but it’ll still be a few years until a significant impact in the way that customer service is delivered will be realized. CRMs will have to jump on the bandwagon in order to provide a better service than their competitors.
Before long, customers will start considering whether or not a product offers a solution that’s IoT friendly when making a purchasing decision.
Until then, I’ll continue scrambling through my purse, phone in hand, while looking for the keys to open my front door.
Read Next: How to choose the perfect app for your business
Image credit: Shutterstock, GE
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