Enhanced Customer Experience With IoT Cloud

Salesforce introduced its Cloud-based IoT Cloud platform, so as to offer the opportunity to its clients in a better understanding of the customer data. IoT has emerged as a buzzword in recent years. However, the Salesforce consulting companies are looking out for ways and means – to establish a connection between the data on the connected devices and the customer data.

Moreover, IoT Cloud from Salesforce is empowered by an event-processing engine named Thunder. It helps to capture, filter or respond to events in real-time. Thunder is based on open-source tools of the likes of Apache Kafka. (A messaging system that is capable of handling huge volumes reads and writes per second) and Apache Storm (Big Data and Event Processing Platform in real-time).

In this post, we will provide insights on how the businesses are empowering themselves by proper utilization of the data on such connected devices. The end result is of course to offer streamlined customer experience.

The IoT Cloud has its own benefits as well as limitations. Let us now throw some light on these. “What are the Benefits of IoT Cloud?”.

Benefits of IoT Cloud

There are multiple reasons as to why businesses would like to adopt IoT Cloud. Here are some of the reasons for adopting IoT Cloud:

Security

First and foremost, security is an all-important factor to adopt IoT Cloud.  In the words of Dylan Steele, IoT Cloud Director, it runs high in terms of security. “We’re running the IoT Cloud on the same enterprise-grade security that we use for all our Salesforce applications,” he said. However, he adds that on account of the increasing data breaches in recent years, there are data governance issues that are of major concern for the clients.

Easier Data Collection Process

Another reason for which IoT Cloud can be adopted by the users is to make the data collection process much easier for users. The event processing engine for the IoT Cloud is capable of ingesting almost billions of events per day. So, the less technical users need not rely on the data analysts to understand the data. It is on top of this data that rules are built – to help in the identification of specific events, requiring some actions.

Connecting Data to Customer Experience

There is a rule-based approach that is followed here. The data from these connected devices use machine-learning based controlling for updation of the IoT system. This way the data from the connected devices improve customer management.

Next, we gather some insights on the disadvantages of IoT Cloud.

The LImitations are:

Lack of Flexibility

Salesforce enables the business owners, without any programming skills to build a customized app – without using the preconfigured elements like dashboards and widgets. However, in certain cases, there is a requirement for the programming components of the platform – so that they can tune the apps. In such cases, the preconfigured elements act as constraints and not benefits.

Security

Security concerns are a major vulnerability of IoT Cloud. There is always a need to protect the big data on these connected devices. Since there is every probability that the data can be stolen – either by cybercriminals or the competitors. This, therefore, requires the effective user and device identification.

Finally, we highlight the features of IoT Cloud in shaping end-to-end customer experience.

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Some features of IoT Cloud to render the end-to-end Customer Experience?

IoT Cloud renders the end-to-end customer experience with the following features:

Insights from Einstein Analytics

Einstein Analytics is a business analytics software that is built in the Cloud. It enhances data processing. As billions of events are ingested by Salesforce IoT Cloud per day, a data processing tool like Einstein Analytics is useful as it acts as an important piece of the architectural component.

Einstein offers insight on, not only sensor data from the connected devices but ERP records as well as website logs. It offers the best way of visualization, thereby creating a story. This makes the reports – easily readable, easy to remember and understand. Moreover, Salesforce can mix data from external sources and offer to keep a track on the emerging trends and make useful predictions.

Customer Context

It is important to gather data from the connected devices as well as the data on purchase order history, case history and the location of the client. Here comes the concept of customer context – the environment in which, the customers take some action. This helps to evoke better real-time responses. Deep data analysis and machine learning are applied to this data – that comprises of both customer actions as well as context.

Summary

Thunder is the big data processing pipeline and rules engine of Salesforce. It captures, filters and evokes a real-time response to events. In today’s, competitive marketplace, one of the critical aspects is to address the customer experience, with updated customer data, It is the IoT Cloud that can help your business to use your data in a meaningful way.

Though the IoT Cloud is a standalone system, it comes with connectors that integrate it with other third-party tools as well as other Salesforce products. Here comes in Einstein Analytics that gathers data from various sources and generates meaningful reports. This provides better insights on customer context and tells you about how the product or service is used by the same client..A