As the popular saying goes, “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore ...”. Indeed, innovation is the key to a successful future and it’s clear that this statement has never rung truer. Like many technologies burgeoning in the post-cloud era, the magic of Internet of Things (IoT) will be unlocked at scale in 2017.

The IoT is the biggest customer experience-disrupter on the horizon right now. The data sourced from a few stray trackers and connected appliances might offer some insights into personal activity patterns and home energy consumption. But far richer information will be gathered as the practice of embedding sensors in virtually every device, and even in natural objects, expands.

We estimate that by 2020, there will be more than 40-billion “things” connected to the internet. If you’ve been paying attention, that’s the same year 5G is to come online — the perfect, low-energy standard for connecting all these endpoints to the internet and to each other. In the coming year, we’ll see companies lay the groundwork for IoT by designing and delivering omnichannel customer experiences.

In today’s fast-pace environment, where IoT is rapidly becoming a reality, every aspect of consumer lives is shifting to become digital, it’s essential that the process of any type be quick, safe, secure and, perhaps above all else, be simple. We are at the centre of spearheading the drive towards a world where more organisations will explore hyper-personalisation and behavioural tracking to engage customers across even more channels to deliver tailored and targeted content, products, and services.

But unless there is a practical application in the present, an innovation is like the drawings in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook — a “brilliant idea”. Hence, our combined efforts enable consumers to lead a more connected life — a life where their digital and physical worlds converge.

This will be extremely important in industries such as financial services and department stores, where physical locations seize to exist. It is imperative to strike the right balance of outreach and personalisation — providing too much of a targeted experience can be intrusive and turn a customer off, but providing a generic experience can feel underwhelming.

Early industry adopters will begin using a single customer experience platform to mine data accrued from all points of engagement. This type of system will include self-service analytics, mobile analytics, and big data analytics.

Analytics do provide the insights that brands are looking for, but it’s important to view contact centre analytics from a customer, agent, and organisational perspective. Other solutions attempting to manage customer experiences cannot work beyond a single interaction.

They’re either trapped in a function (sales, marketing, and service) or a channel (voice, mobile, digital, and social) or worse both. These silos are where accountability disappears. In an era when consumers expect a seamless digital experience, it only takes one interruption to lose customer loyalty.

At the end of the day, it is essential to device a multi-layered approach to reach the consumer and upcoming technologies will help create a strong foundation to address the conundrum:

* 2017 will be the year of chatbots and microapps. Microapps are key to unlocking the next wave of customer experience, since there’s stunted growth in overall app downloads, but a positive progression in messaging apps.

* More companies will fully embrace digital transformation by moving to cloud-based contact centres. Migrating to a cloud assists companies to simplify contact centre operations and achieve efficiency. This will help contact centres become more agile while providing true automation of decision-making in real-time and give companies the ability to scale up or down according to seasonal, hourly, and regional needs. Businesses can use such real-time intelligence to guide the workforce and improve problem resolution.

* Virtual reality could be the next frontier in consumer experience. With co-browsing, call centre resource planning, and data visualisation applications, VR has the ability to simplify and clarify. Given customer demands for new channels of communication including video, VR is the logical next frontier.

The writer is Managing Director, Genesys Middle East.