In today’s increasingly competitive business landscape, an organization’s ability to quickly and efficiently meet and exceed customer expectations is essential. And yet few businesses today have the ability to gather useful business intelligence about customer behaviors and consumption patterns. Whether the business is a retail store, automobile dealership, or healthcare provider network, enabled business intelligence allows organizations to gather and analyze relevant data so they can engage with clients with the right information at the right time – a key to survival in the digital age.
For the better part of a century, organizations have relied upon gathering information about customer behavior in pretty much the same way: by reviewing sales data and running focus groups. As a result, an entire industry for business intelligence was established to help businesses identify and analyze data. With the invention of the personal computer, businesses suddenly had the capability to gather and analyze information themselves. While this model was quicker and more cost-effective than previous ones, it wasn’t long before it too became outdated as businesses transitioned to the Internet. Today, we live in an era of pocket PCs known as Smartphones and again the amount of data being generated by customers and prospects has grown exponentially.
Now that Smartphones have built-in Wi-Fi technologies, consumers have access to competitor products and prices at any time and often comparison shop while in traditional brick and mortar establishments, a practice known as showrooming. As the speed of technological capabilities of customer devices increase, so does the need to gather information about how the customers behave in a real-time way. Wi-Fi is the common denominator among the large variety of customer devices and is emerging as a critical tool for marketers.
Recent advances in technology allow for customer behaviors to be captured in ways that could never have been foreseen just a few years ago. Wi-Fi location services and rich data analytics can now be utilized to not only gain insight into what a customer does within the organization’s physical location, but business leaders can now look at important location-based data within the organization’s facility to provide insight and timely action into consumer behaviors, purchasing patterns, and competitive pressures. Engaging the modern customer in this way allows for a more personal touch and better customer experience, which turns more visitors into customers and increases brand loyalty.
As businesses continue to embrace digital transformation, they need to partner with solution providers who can offer real-time analytics that empower successful customer engagement. Today’s solutions range from on-demand customer behavior reporting to targeted instantaneous customer engagement and marketing, allowing businesses to navigate the disruptive digital marketplace of today.
In the coming weeks, I’ll share more about the technology and solutions that will change the consumer world as we know it across a variety of vertical markets like retail, healthcare, automotive, education, and manufacturing/ distribution. Buckle up folks, it’s going to be a heck of a ride.
About the Author:
Dennis Holmes is the Director of Mobility and Infrastructure Solutions for Internetwork Engineering (IE) and has been involved with Wi-Fi for over 18 years. Connect with Dennis on LinkedIn.