Big Data Is Watching Your Customers

Forget Big Brother, big data is always seeing, always tracking, and always collecting data. Smart mobile devices, smart appliances and even intelligent vehicles can offer a constant feed of data for businesses to utilize in a variety of ways.

Let’s take a peek into one day in the life of Joe Consumer to see how his actions become part of the Internet of Things and the data stream you use to create powerful big data analytics for your company.

After Joe stumbles out of the shower he heads for the kitchen where his coffee pot and dishwasher are connected to their manufacturers. That’s a good thing because the dishwasher is having service issues.

But Joe doesn’t have to worry about it because the unit has sent an error code that is captured and translated by the manufacturer’s computer.

After a quick cup of coffee and a Danish, Joe gets in his car and heads to work. On his way, Joe looks for nearby dry cleaners where he can drop off his suits before going to the office. This search is recorded by the GPS and sent to its owners as part of a customer improvement program.

At lunch, Joe goes to a local cafe where he tweets his location, and surfs the web for the latest action movie download. All of this is tracked and can be seen on social sites and in browser history by a myriad companies.

With geo-tracking, social sites that can be accessed on the go, and commercial activity from Internet devices, smart devices and smart cars provide treasure troves of information about a consumer’s movements, buying habits, and social interactions.

So what does this all mean for you? Well you can create advertising for mobile devices that appears when a customer walks or drives by your location. Or you can create new services or products based on purchases and search history. You can even create service packages that promote preventive maintenance as an add-on when a customer purchases an appliance.

And as technology improves, you can even link multiple devices, offering the customer more benefits and offering you even more information. The sky’s the limit when it comes to mining data from the Internet of Things and creating value-added offerings for your market.

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