How IoT Devices Can Enhance the Connected Customer Experience

Image courtesy of Retail customer experience

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the world, consumers have put health first as they interact with companies.

“To reduce the risk of infection, people are anxious to minimize physical contact and maximize contactless interactions, and companies are taking note,” according to the Capgemini report, “COVID-19 and the Age of the Contactless Customer Experience.”

The pandemic has affected lifestyles, and consumers now gravitate toward contactless purchasing methods, creating a huge potential for intelligent products enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and (machine learning) in the market, said Regu Ayyaswamy, senior vice president and global head, Internet of Things (IoT) at Tata Consultancy Services.

IoT Enables Contactless Service

“We are seeing an uptick in demand for AI- and IoT-enabled products, which can be controlled from anywhere, at any time,” Ayyaswamy said.

TCS, for example, delivered an  IoT platform for connected pools that enables remote equipment monitoring, predictive and proactive maintenance of pool equipment and helps pool professionals provide customer support from anywhere in the world, he said. It also allows pool owners to remotely control pool settings and even adjust temperature, lighting, etc., through voice commands.

“IoT allows devices to communicate issues to the support team automatically, and engineers can remotely program and resolve issues,” he said.

Service technicians can also remotely program, adjust or fix certain consumer devices, such as thermostats, much like technicians do for enterprise customers. according to Bill Donlan, executive vice president and digital CX/Salesforce at Capgemini.

“Consumers are being enabled similarly [to enterprise customers] as we move to the age of “things” on the Internet,” Donlan said. “These systems are able to self-diagnose, request repairs, request replacement parts, identify and predict usage-related service needs. And the use of past maintenance records and analytics can allow us to predict when service is required.”

Defining IoT fore customer experience can be challenging, as each of the devices that can replicate sense and use a variety of connectivity options, said Hyoun Park, CEO and principal analyst at Amalgam Insights

A Bluetooth camera could be very different from a cellular connected microphone, for instance. In each case, the ability to augment the experience is limited by the quality of the hardware, the bandwidth available in the network, the type of connectivity used, and the accessibility to the outputs of that device, Park said.

“Think of a security camera,” he said “If it lacks the resolution to make out a person’s face, it is functionally useless,” he said. “If the signal can’t be transferred from the device to a screen in a timely manner, the viewer will just see jittery nonsense even if the camera works. If the signal is hacked, this information could be shared with other people. And if the camera output can only be seen on proprietary apps or devices, it reduces the accessibility of the output.”

AI Service Robots

Cheetah Mobile, which manufactures robots, uses IoT to create a connected customer experience at conferences, said Vincent Li, head of global sales and marketing, IoT and robotics at Cheetah Mobile.

In light of prioritizing the health and safety of event attendees, AI service robots — IoT devices embedded with software to connect offline and online scenarios —play a role in conferences by virtually transporting remote participants to event venues via a cloud-based network connection, giving each of the robots IoT capabilities, Li said.

To enable these remote interactions, robotics company OrionStar developed an all-in-one platform that allows the show host, vendors and attendees to interact with and control the robots, according to Li.

Through the virtual conference app, attendees can select the events that they want to attend, book appointments with different vendors and communicate with the vendors during the show. By deploying the exhibition robots, event hosts can guarantee  a24/7, consistent experience for attendees: Robots don’t get tired or bored of repeating the same information, Li said.

At the 2020 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition (Auto China), Cheetah Mobile provided online attendees with the chance to vote for the automobiles they wanted to see via its mobile app. Cheetah Mobile’s robots then visited the booths of attendees’ top choices so the remote participants could see the cars.

For on-site attendees, exhibition robots can answer questions, provide food/beverages and offer venue maps — all while remaining contactless, Li said. These robots help event planners and exhibitors provide contactless check-in, event information and venue layout guidance for in-person attendees.

The central potential issue with robots in a conference space is the challenge of voice recognition in noisy environments that may require a combination of voice, AI-driven lip reading, and other context, Parks said.

Also, to simulate human interactions, robots need to understand pointing and facial cues associated with the human desire to choose something. Depending on how robots are set up to understand language, robotic service could be an advantage or a disadvantage, he said.

“If the robots use speech with subtitles and options for multiple languages, they could be superior to human interaction while robots with limited language skills could end up being too frustrating to work with,” Park said.

Self-Diagnosing Speakers

Connected things can gather critical data about the surrounding environment that can then provide important feedback on important changes.

Consider smart speakers, for example, which may be too sensitive in certain environments.

“Everyone has connected speakers, but they are not all able to tolerate water or humidity,” said 451 Research analyst, Sheryl Kingstone.

There are connected speakers that include sensors that monitor the environment, such as ambient humidity and proactively self-diagnose problems, she said.

“So when you move it into the bathroom, all of a sudden it triggers a support call,” Kingstone said. “Then the support person can email the customer saying the humidity levels are too high for the speaker and to check where you’re using [the speaker], because we don’t suggest using it in the bathroom.'”

Sensor data allows the customer service and support team to identify anomalies and proactively reach out to the customer before the speaker shorts out, she said. This could save the customer from having to make a trip to the repair shop.

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