The Customer service in the era of the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is already a reality in the commercial world. The number of devices connected to the internet is getting closer to the 20 billion connections, as predicted by research firm, Gartner. We should reach this number by 2020.

People are increasingly using objects. When there are usage problems, people need assistance or simply more information, traditional customer service channels are not always up to scratch.

With all the improvements in customer service in recent years, improved technology, better telecommunication, the automated response systems, the customer satisfaction is more a result of automation rather than a human intervention. A new report from research company Ovum, commissioned by LogMeIn, has identified a significant disconnect between what today’s mobile customers expect from the customer service and what the call centers are doing.

The findings also highlight that the IoT technologies have a huge potential to resolve the technical issues. While the technology is not yet well understood by customers, they are evidently willing to use it if it means solving technical issues quicker. This shows a number of opportunities.In a survey, over 50 per cent of customers said that they didn’t see the necessity of connecting their appliances to the internet.But 25 % said they would do it if it resolved faster their customer service issues.When asked about the useful benefits of connected appliances, 63% of customers said that they would like to improve resolution rates for technical problems.

Although not all of the surveyed customers are aware of what the IoT mean to them, they all want to be able to resolve problems faster.Today, the mobile users are empowered to seek out support from various channels and they expect a response from those channels in minutes.For example, instant images of issues can be sent to the contact centre so they can have a better understanding of the issue.This is how the IoT is part of the solution for a better customer service.

Such real time visualisation technology has the potential to shorten support times and will greatly reduce a product return which is a real problem – The Consultancy branch of Accenture estimates the cost of faulty products to $9.4 billion usd annually.