Many organizations have forgotten digital transformation isn’t about winning the proverbial tech race — it’s a pathway for creating exceptional, personalized experiences for your customers and delighting them at each stage of the journey. Yadhu Gopalan, CEO, Esper, shares how you can update your intelligent device fleet and boost customer satisfaction by shipping software updates.
SaaS companies understand that living in the cloud means unlimited end-user feedback and infinite insights into software usage. They can see what needs improvement and then implement enhancements by pushing an update the same day. This approach works seamlessly because it puts the customer at the center of going digital.
Going digital is more complicated for organizations with dedicated device fleets — kiosks, PoS systems, tablets, mobile devices, and other such smart edge tech. It’s easy to lose sight of the customer experience and go into survival mode. But the solution is simple: Move away from the old set-it-and-forget-it mentality and transform your fleet by sending regular software updates and continuously improving your customer experience.
Your Intelligent Device Fleet Needs Regular Software Updates
Hardware is just a commodity — something that loses value over time and will end up in the trash. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially if your business is dependent on a fleet of smart devices, but we all know it to be true. Let’s look at some hardware we’re all familiar with: a car. After buying a car, each of us has experienced the disappointing and embarrassing realization that our new purchase begins decreasing in value as soon as we drive off the lot. After all, a car is just a commodity — it’s not capable of improving, only aging.
However, the exception to this ‘car = commodity’ rule comes into play if the vehicle you happen to drive off the lot is a Tesla. There are many reasons to want one (sustainability, status, design). However, a Tesla car’s real value is that it continues to improve as you drive it because Tesla regularly pushes software updates — endlessly enhancing your experience as a driver. Tesla has mastered customer-centric digital transformation, and it’s a significant factor contributing to their holding the number one spot in brand loyalty among carmakers.
Even though most of us are not building anything as provocative as electric cars, there are still endless advantages to pushing regular software updates to device fleets. Customers deserve to be the driving factor behind ongoing innovation. This rings true whether you’re building restaurant point of sale systems, warehouse scanners, or the tablets on exercise bikes. If cars can get regular updates, why can’t a kiosk? It can. And it should because without continuous software updates, you’re needlessly at risk of:
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- Failing to meet customers’ increasing expectations.
- Weakened security organization-wide.
- Wasting money by reaching device end-of-life issues earlier than necessary.
- Lack of knowledge regarding your customers’ behaviors, wants and needs.Â
Continuous software updates are the difference between hardware as a commodity and an intelligent device fleet that provides increasing value both to the end-user and the fleet owner.
Why Is Sending Updates to Device Fleets Scary?
Traditionally, organizations with device fleets ship software once a year or less in one big release cycle because of the effort and risk involved. When the time comes for a new software release, it’s all hands on deck as the consequences of a release gone wrong can be fatal. An unanticipated issue in the software update can brick a device, which either means sending the unit back to headquarters or sending an IT support person to fix it. Until the device is repaired, it remains unusable, which has a cascade of effects for customers and end-users. When this happens in the hundreds or thousands, recovery is a challenge.
The above scenario is why the status quo for shipping software involves planning sessions, a work back schedule, practice run-throughs, coordination with customers, and ultimately waiting for a phone call to hear what broke — that’s too large of an investment to occur regularly.
However, there are other options. Would Tesla send updates all the time if it meant recalling tens of thousands of cars each time?
See More: Why Cybersecurity Rating Matters In The Era Of Growing Digital Transformation
Why Should You Start Shipping Software?
Organizations like billion-dollar electric car companies have spent millions on internal DevOps infrastructure to ensure they can safely ship software updates whenever the need arises. But fortunately, you don’t need to make the same investment to obtain the freedom and power that comes with shipping software at will.
Over-the-air updates are the key to a successful, customer-centric digital transformation for device-dependent organizations. Your solution needs to meet these requirements to move beyond the status quo:
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- The ability to push over-the-air updates and quickly roll them back.
- A robust CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) pipeline.
- Designated, customizable groups to target with updates.
- Diagnostics and debugging for each stage of your development pipeline.
- Remote troubleshooting for field devices.
With the power to continuously update, Device fleets can deliver delightful and surprising customer experiences. And your organization is in the position to go beyond best practices and start enjoying the advantages of:
1. Continuously implementing customer feedback
Putting the customer at the center of your digital, connected strategy and creating a customized end-user experience depends on quickly and regularly implementing feedback.
2. Improved brand loyaltyÂ
The natural consequence of a more personalized end-user experience is a deeper connection with your customers and increased brand loyalty.
3. Faster go-to-market
Knowing you can make improvements at any time opens the door for more quickly bringing new products releases to market.
4. Increasing the value of your fleet
The only way to transform a device from an immutable object to a high-value asset is by regularly shipping software updates.
A change in mindset, not just technology, is transformative when the focus remains on creating exceptional customer experiences. We cannot just automate but customize the end-user experience. We cannot just predict but learn from our customers, and we cannot settle for the status quo when it comes to device fleets. Organizations need to empower their teams to start successfully shipping regular software updates and set their business up for transformation success,
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