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SMS and IoT A Powerful Combination

Updated: Oct 12, 2023


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Today's highly connected world requires highly connected people at all levels within both businesses and society overall. People and machines can collaborate and solve any challenge with the right combination of infrastructure, technology, and skills.


More and more industries are developing new ways to connect their customers to the digital world, and vice versa – through more social channels. This puts people in direct contact with companies across the globe. People find more inspiration and information online, from any other source.


In the connected era, businesses have new ways to contact their existing customers and discover new ones. Intelligent communications help improve customer experience via email-like messaging and data-driven actions.


The next generation of messaging powered by AI and IoT is more interactive and efficient while empowering high-touch customer engagement. It bridges companies, products, and customers to provide a seamless experience through interactive SMS and actionable IoT insights, allowing them to build more profound and personal relationships.


SMS and IoT are a transformational union.


The IoT environment is a complex web of interconnected devices that need to process vast data volumes and exploit them to reduce costs and improve efficiency.


SMS and IoT enable businesses to create a richer customer experience through interactive SMS and IoT data insights and information, allowing for a more personal relationship.

Yet, little is said about the role SMS is playing in the world of IoT and vice versa. Over the years, SMS has, through its ubiquitous nature, provided continuous reach and reliability. Text messaging is a crucial tool for the future of the Internet Of Things, but it's usually overlooked.


Customers have become used to receiving SMS from businesses engaging for transactions or marketing goods and services on their mobile phones. At the same time, companies want customers to access information about their business and products while away from their offices.

Benefits of IoT adoption


When we think of the various IoT benefits, we usually think of:

  • Operational efficiencies

  • Improved employee productivity

  • Enhanced communications

  • Enhanced process visibility

  • Improved digital assets visibility

  • Access to real-time data

  • Increased Revenue

  • Reduced Costs

  • Improved innovation, from products usage insights


While all these benefits are significant for any organisation, they are less consumer-oriented.

Looking at the partnering of IoT and SMS, the goals of IoT are similar, but they feature a shift in strategy to be more customer-centric.

While the IoT and SMS are different things, they work well together to create a more solid user experience.

Intelligent communications help improve the customer's experience via email-like messaging. SMS is an essential component in IoT applications. The next generation of rich SMS powered by AI and IoT is a more interactive, efficient and empowering high-touch customer experience, supporting customers through text-based chat and bridging companies, products, and customers together to provide a seamless experience.


In the IoT economy, many industries are embracing real-time communications. Businesses implement A2P messaging to trigger automatic mobile alerts, notifications and reminders from their IoT applications or devices to interact with customers and employees.


A new age marketing solution.


Today, people communicate over messaging services and applications to stay in touch with friends, family, and business partners. Companies need to ensure that their messaging communications strategy supports different communication modes, including SMS, RCS, video, social media, email and audio, to name a few.


A multi-channel communication strategy is essential, while many organisations strive to create an Omni-channel experience for their customers.

Businesses have realised the potential advantages of operating in a way that utilises IoT data insights and coupling it with messaging to their benefit to create:

  • Improved customer experience

  • Harnessing customer data through relevant insights

  • Improve decisions

  • Faster service delivery

  • Increased adoption rates

While IoT is used as a catch-all term for integrating connected services and products into a business, we don't necessarily think of IoT for connected devices for market research, Order-to-Cash, or loyalty programs.


If you provide an online and offline grocery order fulfilment service, you've got IoT in place to collect and analyse data on your customers, and you use messaging to notify your customers, provide news on fulfilment, location, etc.


Using Messaging and IoT-enabled devices allows companies to deliver exceptional customer experiences using advanced analytics powered Big Data and Machine Learning.


Consumers expect IoT enabled devices to deliver the right content at the right time using the right messaging platform.

Data is leveraged in real-time with direct real-time communication channels (messaging), instantly delivering actionable insights, increasing sales conversions and triggering alerts and reminders.


The outcome

  • Customers can initiate conversations with businesses without leaving their current environment.

  • Collaborative customer service & support is a key focus area for all companies, and customers are key players.

  • Personalisation of customer interactions is one of the crucial elements for any customer-centric company. With IoT services, businesses can better personalise customer interactions and improve the customer experience by combining IoT for real-time data insights and SMS to communicate the gathered information and understanding in a form the customer is familiar with and easily accessible.

  • Customers receive just in time promotions, discounts, order and delivery updates, and other relevant logistical information.

  • Access to real-time information, answers to queries and feedback.

SMS for IoT connectivity.


The use of SMS technology to measure, transmit, and receive data without an active data session is perfect for cases where battery-powered sensors need to send and receive limited amounts of information such as temperature, weight, humidity, etc.


Sending an SMS to a device can wake it up and trigger an IP session. Short messages are then sent from sensors to the IoT platform to relay a machine's condition. It allows the devices to send information when they come back online after being triggered by an SMS, then go back to sleep to conserve the battery life.

This connectivity method is commonly used in systems to track an items' location and for predictive maintenance cases. They are often seen in asset management, logistics management, and other industries, such as gas and electric smart meters.


SMS for IoT Alerts.


SMS is an easy and cost-effective way to send out push notifications. Push notifications require fewer resources and a lesser number of servers to send them out in real-time and can be personalised to allow subscribers to opt-in and opt-out at a given time.


SMS is a two-way, interactive channel of communication. A consumer can receive information from a business and vice versa.

Thanks to SMS's economies of scale over other IoT communication channels, SMS and IoT services' combined value is so high that you could probably get a cheaper SMS service than a low-cost IoT gateway.


SMS for IoT System Security.


With the recent rise in hacking and data breaches, passwords alone are no longer sufficient. Businesses need more secure options to protect user identity and access management. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and two-factor authentication (2FA) are two popular authentication methods that IT security teams use.

Security of the IoT ecosystem is of the highest importance. One way to achieve some protection is by using Two-factor authentication (2FA) and Multi-factor authentication (MFA) to access IoT applications.


It is a way for an organisation to prove that a person engaging with the service is authorised to access it, thus minimising the risk of unauthorised access to applications.


Conclusion


Let's face it, the hype around IoT has been around for quite some time. Even though we have yet to realise its potential fully, we are behind on the analysts' predictions. The technology is delivering. There are devices, sensors and products that have become integral parts of our daily lives.

Advanced communication services and technologies such as Messaging, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), allow businesses to leverage a multi-platform, multi-device and multi-channel environment to foster conversations. It enables companies to use real-time data insights to keep their customers engaged and informed.


Both Messaging and IoT solutions will touch nearly all industries. As companies implement more IoT-enabled services and intelligent chatbots via SMS, customers will have a seamless, full-service experience that is reliable, secure and scalable.


 

Nassia Skoulikariti

Founder/CEO Apiro Data Ltd

Get in touch and let’s build something great together!


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