Wearable technology has now been around for a while and has become part of work and life thanks to things like Apple watches and the range of fitness devices. While those have been fun and helpful, a more interesting development in wearable technology and marketing is how you can use them to improve the customer experience. As a tech developer, it's important to see how what we do can further the overall company effort to win customers and retain them through exceptional experiences with our brand.
Here are three ways your company can incorporate wearable technology to enhance the customer experience:
1. Track All Customer Desires
Wearables record tons of data, so it makes sense that this information could give you insights that you might not have collected because the customer did not know how to express their desires. That's where companies like Carnival Cruises have developed a way to get a deep understanding of what their customers want so they can immediately deliver that as part of the customer experience through the use of what looks like a medallion. Walt Disney World has done something similar with a band that looks like a Fitbit.
Both offer a way for customers to do everything they want, like order and buy merchandise, create itineraries and more. The Carnival Cruise medallion even provides directions to different activities on the ship and opens cabin doors. In the process, all that data is synthesized and analyzed to improve those interactions and learn more about a customers' preferences. In this way, technology can further the marketing effort.
2. Improve Security Without Diminishing The Customer Experience
One of the most challenging aspects my own company has faced has been ensuring the most secure payment environment for our customers. Identity verification and authorization processes have become so much more important to transactions. While we have added effective security technology like blockchain distributed ledgers to our solution, we were looking to do even more. This is especially important in an age where customers are beginning to take control of their own data through regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU.
By combining blockchain technology, which allows customers to decide who gets what data and when, with the potential to leverage wearables for biometric authorization and transfer of specific pieces of data, we have the opportunity to create an easy, fast transaction experience for the customer while ensuring a higher level of security to combat fraud. Essentially, a customer's heartbeat or face could become their password.
3. Use With Internal Staff To Address Customer Expectations
While many companies have put the wearable device on the customer for an improved experience, also consider how having your internal team wear them can improve the overall customer experience. This helps identify places in the physical environment where the customer interacts with the brand that can be addressed in real time for better results.
For example, the Cincinnati Airport gave its janitors Samsung Gear S3 smartwatches which allowed them to stay on top of supplies refreshment and cleanups in restrooms. Although this seems like a small area, companies need to look at every component of a customer's experience to see where incremental improvements can be made.
Another benefit of such technology is that it helped the airport understand how long it takes for janitors to do their job and how well their work is received by customers in surveys. This focus on customer experience improvements can be aligned with employee performance through the data collected. In return, the employees better understand how their performance impacts how customers view the brand, no matter how small their role seems.
What To Consider For Your Brand Experience
As these three ways illustrate, not every company will want to use the wearables in the same way to enhance their customer experience. Other ways may involve integrating a wearable within a product made to improve that customer's experience with the brand. Then, a brand may want to focus on the GPS aspect of wearables or just the data collection component. The ability to use wearables in so many ways for a better customer experience is exciting.
Our technology team spent a significant amount of time researching and testing wearables to see how they might help our business customers. This included wearing devices ourselves to see how it changed the transaction experience. Other brands that focus on consumers or a different business audience will need to do the same. Therefore, using this technology as part of your overall marketing effort is actually a way to immerse yourself in the existing customer experience you offer to see what it feels like. That has enabled us to make even more refinements related to the wearable and to our other tactics around designing the best possible customer experience.
