From reactive to proactive customer care with IoT

The Meindl company sets up press containers for cardboard packaging for industrial and commercial customers. Warning lights are attached to the containers, which light up at a filling level of approx. 75 percent. The customer then calls Meindl and registers the container for emptying. That was the starting point.

The question was: How can Meindl get the information without waiting for the customer call? With this early information, the tours could be optimally planned for collection and the customer’s message does not remain until there may be an overcrowding.

During the closer discussion of the ideal solution, Meindl also had the desire to locate the containers. This would avoid unnecessary search times for the driver when he has to search for the location of the container on large company premises. As it turned out, it is not uncommon for certain container customers to move them to other locations in the course of use for space reasons.

The solution was to equip the containers with level sensors that simultaneously record the GPS data for location. The networking is done via Sigfox. Using the ITalks IoT Platform, a dashboard was created on which the Meindl company can read the location and fill level of the containers.

In many cases, digitization begins with a desire for cost optimization. In this project it was the same. Here the drivers are used more optimally through proactive route planning. In addition, Meindl now knows the customer’s container location and thus avoids a driver wasting valuable time searching a customer site.

In the further course of the project, an additional advantage was recognized in the fact that the customer is now actively informed about an upcoming collection, instead of arranging this himself at Meindl. For this purpose, an e-mail service is planned in the first step, which could also be replaced later by an app or customer platform. In this improved customer experience, Meindl now sees a strong competitive advantage with which the salespeople can shine with their customers.

Original Text: ime Mobile Solutions

About ime Mobile Solutions: https://www.ime.de/unternehmen/