“In God We Trust. All Others Must Bring Data.” – W. Edwards Deming, Statistician, Professor, Author

What is it that you imagine when you think about a futuristic world?

Influence from Hollywood movies and science fiction have often found us thinking in a cliched direction - flying cars, talking robots, or tech-powered weapons.

But as the real world would have it, it is none of these (not yet anyway).

After the advent of computers that can fit into a human palm, we as a species have been able to come up with something even more remarkable - an interconnected web that gives life to everyday objects known as (read this in the voice of Morgan Freeman for emphasis) -

Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (or IoT) has the potential to find itself as the cornerstone of all the industries in the world.

But the most notable implementation of the technology that we have been able to find yet has been the empowerment that it brings to home appliances and related devices.

How IoT benefits Common Home Appliances

Let’s make a list of common appliances that we can possibly find in your house at this very moment - television, toaster, microwave, juicer, security cameras, thermostat, refrigerator, water purifier, fan, electric chimney, coffee maker, air conditioning, or even the security alarm.

home

Now imagine that you can control or automate the functioning of any of these appliances right from your smartphone or a portable mobile device.

You are in complete control over how, when, and why every appliance in your house should react.

This is the essence of integrating IoT with everyday home appliances!

While this may come across as a far-fetched idea that has been cooked up by a tech-head for other tech-heads, the truth is that there are some real benefits that IoT powered home appliances can bring for the common populace.

The total smart home appliances market grew by 92% between Q2 2016 and Q2 2017 to a whopping $3.3 billion!

Here are the segments that are growing -

But first, here’s a look at the roadmap of the development route of IoT appliances.

The Underlying Idea Behind Smart IoT Home Appliances

The following flowchart gives an overview of how IoT is powering appliances to always be connected to the cloud and be smart by processing data.

The basic idea is to connect everyday objects to the Internet.

Some smart appliances take the route of low powered wireless networks to communicate over the network, like Bluetooth, while others use superior technologies like the Wi-Fi network.

Once the network has been properly set up, these smart appliances can constantly “talk” to each other as well as the user.

When it comes to users interacting with their IoT Appliances, mobile computing has spearheaded the practice.

Typically, the appliance provider provides a dedicated mobile app which become a focal point for the user to receive updates and notifications about these IoT home appliances and control them at will.

Such design of services can also end up broadening the capabilities of these appliances.

For example, the app or the appliance can provide recipe suggestions based on the available food items that are stored in the refrigerator.

How IoT based Home Appliances Can Benefit Your Business

Okay. So it is time for the moment of truth.

The reason why you were reading this in the first place.

How is IoT changing the world of home appliances as we know it?

Or, just like any other worthwhile technological invention (listen carefully, iPhone without an Aux port), how is it making your business and the lives of your customers easier?

Here’s a comprehensive look at everything that is on the table:

1. Real-time Analytics

Machines are creating data every second. From user behavior data to operational data.

This data if analyzed and processed properly can give you a deep insight into your consumer's mind and can help you optimize your machine to their preference.

Do you know that according to a research by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), $7 Billion worth of property damages were caused by home fires in 2015?

Common home appliances like Dishwashers, Dryers, Microwaves, Refrigerators, and Toasters were reported to be the leading causes.

New appliances, especially the ones that your customers are using for the first time, can often end up being a subject of experimentation.

They might be tempted to play around with the features, and maybe even unknowingly push it to the verge of breaking through a wrong setting.

Hence, with the integration of IoT with everyday home appliances, users can automatically receive alerts if any sort of misuse, invalid tuning, or unusual setting is in the picture.

This protects them from frequent trips to the service center on one end of the spectrum, and from fatal hazards on the other.

And as a company, this also has a direct impact on your revenues since better functioning and high-quality appliances mean more business!

2. Anomaly and Maintenance Detection

It is one thing to break an appliance, but there is always the possibility of the appliance breaking on its own due to internal reasons.

The use of data along with Artificial Intelligence in IoT based Home Appliances helps your customers to always be aware of the health of each appliance that is a part of their network.

What is the result here?

To start out with, the security of the network increases by leaps and bounds.

If any foreign entity, like a hacker or a bot, is illegally trying to access the network, the system is smart enough to pinpoint the breach and prevent it from taking place.

Additionally, this also extends to the fact that the condition of the appliances can be continuously monitored.

IoT Cartoon

Thus, if there are any wear and tear due arising due to constant usage, the system intimates the user of the same so the maintenance protocol can be timely triggered.

In some cases, if a lot of relevant data has been collected and is readily available for analysis, the breaking or maintenance point of appliances can be predicted even before the event occurs!

This comes under the purview of Predictive Maintenance Alerts and trashes the usual home maintenance systems since it eliminates the root cause instead of merely repairing it.

3. Capability Optimization

IoT also helps your customers to have a better experience with your products.

Think about it this way - can the capability of an appliance remain the same throughout its lifecycle?

Of course not.

Device capabilities start depreciating the moment your customer buys it and walks out of the store.

Hence, the recommended setting for every appliance changes with its age.

This is made possible with the help of a large base of user data that acts as a guide and points in the direction of the most suitable appliance settings that should be deployed in a particular situation.

Moreover, general settings and machine specific insights can be provided to your customers which also makes it easy to maintain the device, thus increasing its life along the way.

What does this mean in terms of revenue?

Better customer retention, of course!

Your appliances don’t break as often as that of your competitors and immediately makes you stand out from the crowd.

4. Self Healing

Okay, so we have already established that IoT powered Home Appliances can gather and access a vast pool of usage data that has been collected from users all around the world.

This is a superpower in itself if you think about it. (all hail the InternetMan? IoTMan? SomethingMan?)

But how does this help you?

If any anomaly in the system is detected, not only can it be intimated to the user, the system also has the capability to heal on its own!

Pre-defined systems and processes can be installed in place that enable the appliance to take care on its own, transforming it from an infant to an adult overnight.

Thus, this means that your customers do not have to reach out to you as often as they usually do, which means that you as a business can cut down on costs related to customer care, repair, guarantee/warranty claims, additional human resources, etc.

5. Asset Condition Monitoring and Predictive Replenishment

Okay, so IoT helps the user to know if and when can the appliance break down.

But the story does not end here.

IoT powered Smart Home Appliances can predict through pattern detection if the device needs general maintenance work.

And to specify things, it can also intimate if a particular part of the appliance has or is about to break down and needs to be replaced.

Again, this is done by relying on historical user data to predict when the particular part will be out of order.

This enhances the comfort level of your customers since the breaking of certain devices, like the thermostat or the air conditioner, means downtime that interferes with quality customer experience.

Through IoT, a support ticket about the servicing of the device or a part of it can be created even before the event occurs.

The support team reviews it and users are then notified of the same.

A proper course of action can then begin.

6. Customer Engagement Analysis and Self Learning

Since a large pool of user data is always ready to be deployed by the smart system to take efficient decisions, the system also ends up learning new things about the users through effective Customer Engagement Analysis.

What does this mean?

Understanding consumer behavior is a huge part of the market analysis for any business plan in any industry, and IoT does that for you automatically.

It empowers you and your business to keep a keen eye on how your consumers are interacting with your appliances and the features or settings that they are using the most.

Key insights about the usage of the product can then be unearthed.

Take this for an instance - your R&D department has worked hard for months to introduce a new feature for your appliance.

The updated product is released and incidentally, this coincides with the event of the sales figures shooting up.

Excited about the result, you tie them to the new feature, only to learn 3 months later that merely 5% of the customers are actually using it.

You get a wake-up call that it was actually a past digital marketing campaign that got you the sales results.

Life is happy again and you start scaling your marketing efforts, discontinuing the new feature of the appliance, and cutting down on the obsolete R&D costs.

Additionally, based on usage statistics and data gathered from the whole customer base, key insights like Customer Churn Prediction can become a reality.

This helps to bring down the attrition rate and further increases the revenue of your company.

7. User Personalisation

IoT based Home Appliances keep tracking the general settings of every user and provide them with a single click function of restoring these settings whenever needed.

This enhances the user experience and makes it easy for the user to return to his/her most ideal appliance settings in a second, thus adding a final touch of personalisation.

And the process doesn’t end here.

The system keeps on monitoring the user behavior and keeps updating the most relevant settings on the basis of his/her usage habits. Hyper-local personalisation follows round the clock as a result.

Conclusion

Integrating your appliances with IoT can thus make them more powerful in delivery and more appealing to the customers.

IoT cannot be merely thought of as a new feature. It is a whole new product offering on its own!

IoT is poised to overhaul the market of Home Appliances and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Once the ball gets rolling and companies keep adopting the practice on the global stage, no one can possibly predict where the ball will stop.

More data will only compound the possibilities of the industry and we might soon be moving ahead at a pace that seems too good to be true.

Hence, the best bet here is to join the party as soon as possible to make sure that you don’t miss out on any new attraction!

If you are a Home Appliance manufacturer looking to work on IoT you can always Contact Us. We would love to hear what you have to say about IoT.

7 ways IoT can benefit Home Appliance Manufacturers