Let NFC help standalone appliances reveal your customer insights

Internet-connected appliances have exponentially grown in recent years and become a significant tool for manufacturers gaining deep customer insight for next-generation product development. However, most product usage information is still hidden from their maker because adding a constant internet connection might force the BOM cost above accepted level.

NFC is well-known for enhancing customer engagement by allowing physical interaction between customers and product embedded NFC tag. Moreover, NFC can store compact digital data which retrieved easily and securely by any 13.56MHz reader IC like RE31. This function is highly suitable for appliances requiring a new supplement unit to read parameters and automatically set up for the best configuration. In a similar scenario like appliances which require a consumable unit, NFC tags could play an important role in shuttling customer usage data back to their manufacturer via NFC phones which are ubiquitously available.

Use NFC to return appliance usage information

while drawing customers to official online sale channel

Most appliances spend time over months or years collecting customer usage information. During that period, the appliance can gradually save key metrics into NFC tag as a URL parameter according to NDEF (NFC Data Exchange Format). For example, how long the main appliance has been operated, how long customers continue using the appliance after being notified of consumable unit replacement, etc.

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By tracking usage hours, NFC can show the remaining filter performance.

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Because these key metrics save in NDEF format. The link can be established to serve multiple purposes whenever a customer wants to replace the consumable unit and taps the tag with NFC phones.

By shaping customers behavior to know how to scan the NFC tag from your consumable unit and benefits they will get from it such as discount on next order and coupon that promote brand engagement. In this case, customers are likely to visit official sale channel, then webserver can measure and extract the metrics written by the appliance. Please note that to filter inconsistence data or malicious web requests, web server need to verify the authenticity of message before collecting the data using rolling code in Dynamic NDEF of either SIC43NTor SIC43S1.

Conclusions

Even if the appliance does not have a constant internet connection, it does not mean you as a manufacturer cannot get invaluable customer feedback. Many manufacturers are eager to integrate HF readers into their appliances for various reasons like reading NFC tags for configuration and performing brand protection on the appliance. By integrating an HF reader into your standalone appliance, you enable to create brand engagement campaign for all customers as well as encourage new orders in official sales channels, along with receive key metrics from actual use directly from your appliance.