In today’s hyper-competitive global market, personalization at scale continues to be an accessible and effective way to improve customer experience and generate ROI. As both technology and customer expectations evolve, personalizing every interaction in real time is now a prerequisite.

Shaping custom experiences for maximum engagement is relatively easy behind a digital screen, but how do we translate those experiences to the brick-and-mortar touchpoints for a contextual and seamless “offline” experience? IoT offers accessible and easy to implement solutions, it can unlock many hidden opportunities.

Current IoT solutions in focus

Let’s look at a global industry leader. Amazon launched “Amazon Go”—a convenience store without lines or checkouts.

At each store, the journey starts with facial recognition and ends with automated payments (among many other IoT devices and processes in between).

The takeaway? Amazon Go places a central focus on convenience. It enhances customer experience and expedites the shopping journey through IoT by eliminating the “hassle” of queuing at the checkout counter and taking out a card to pay.

There are many such promising cases of other brands using IoT to improve customer engagement:

• Walmart uses IoT-enabled displays to provide real-time, hyper-personalized recommendations to customers.
• Nike has been using IoT-enabled displays in its stores to showcase products and provide personalized recommendations based on customer data, such as their purchase history and browsing behavior.
• Procter & Gamble has been using IoT-connected displays in retail stores to provide personalized product recommendations to shoppers, and to track customer interactions with the displays.
• McDonald’s has been implementing digital menu boards in its restaurants that use IoT technology to display real-time pricing and promotions.

Likewise, every business can reap the benefits of IoT in a way that is tailored to their CX priorities, budgets, and tech maturity level.

Potential roadmaps

Let’s consider a retailer with:

- Physical stores

- An e-commerce shop

- A mobile app

How can they leverage IoT for interconnected experiences?

For instance, they can use the GPS location through the smartphone to trigger a notification with a relevant offer to a customer focusing on their next-best product. How does the journey proceed?

• Let’s say that you are five blocks away from your preferred retailer and receive a notification with a coupon for something on the top of your wish list. Curious about the offer, you decide to visit the store for more details.
• As you enter the store, an IoT-enabled beacon detects your presence through your mobile app, recognizes you as a loyal customer, and triggers a communication to the internal sales team to greet you properly and offer attentive support.
• As you move around the store, kiosks and displays show you relevant offers based on your customer profile or your extended presence in a specific section. While shopping around, you can choose to scan the barcodes on your smartphone, or self-checkout in an RFID-enabled kiosk.
• As you proceed to pay, you are reminded that you have something on your e-commerce cart and asked if you want the staff to include those items in your current purchase as well. During payment, you can choose to use the credit card stored on your e-wallet.
• Finally, once you leave the store, that same beacon detects your departure and based on POS data indicating your completion of purchase, it sends you a survey to rate your shopping experience.

The age of interconnected CX

This entire journey may sound expensive and difficult to execute. However, setting up a seamless customer journey between the online and the offline worlds—powered by IoT, AI and ML—won’t require complex frameworks for the most part. You just need one consolidated solution that checks all bases.

At Resulticks, we have empowered companies in different industries, from local stores to conglomerates, to improve their customer journey with an approach focused on time-to-value and ROI. We place significant emphasis on being cost-efficient and client-focused as we engineer new-age marketing solutions.