The next big wave in IoT for businesses is voice-led IoT. The convergence of the robust telephony infrastructure and IoT platform solutions is creating exciting opportunities to augment the reach and depth of the IoT with real-time alerts, automated call triggers, and smart telephony workflows that extend the power of voice beyond traditional phone systems.
A Deep Dive into Voice-Led IoT in the Enterprise
In layman’s terms, voice-led IoT is the concept of extending smart machine communications with IoT sensors and devices to automated voice telephony calls. In voice-led IoT, an IoT sensor system detects a specific event (such as a system error, a threshold crossing, an environmental change, etc.) and triggers a predefined telephony event (voice call, IVR/alert message, outbound voicemail, etc. ).
The telephony calls can be configured with playback and IVR interaction options to communicate the event status, log for audit purposes, and guide the operations team or key decision makers to the right actions based on the event context.
Unlocking Use Cases for Real-Time Alerts with Voice
Voice-led IoT opens up opportunities to add real-time voice alerts as an add-on to most existing and future IoT alerting and sensor monitoring solutions. Email and SMS-based IoT alerts and notifications are not always effective or actionable. Emails require opening email apps and responding; SMS-based notifications on mobile phones may not be noticed if the users are in meetings or if it is outside working hours.
Another key benefit of real-time alerts with voice integration is that it is a more effective notification medium for diverse geographies, field workers, or remote teams. Alerts via mobile email and SMS might be missed if the employees are out in the field or on the go. Voice alerts on mobile phones, on the other hand, are a more reliable and easy-to-understand alerting option. The employee can listen to the alert and perform the task without having to sit in front of the digital screens.
Smart Call Triggers for IoT-Enabled Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance is another key driver of IoT in the industry and field service sectors. Monitoring machine status, wear-and-tear indicators, performance outputs, and more, predictive maintenance aims to schedule maintenance or servicing interventions well before systems fail.
In the world of voice-led IoT, we can also add smart call triggers that place automated phone alerts when predictive monitoring levels are breached. For instance, smart conveyor belts with wear and tear sensors may automatically call the maintenance staff and issue voice alerts when the vibration patterns for belt health show a breach in normal operation thresholds.
Telephony Automation in Critical Workflows for Safety and Compliance
IoT sensor solutions in safety-critical and compliance-sensitive industries and use cases are an excellent opportunity to apply voice automation in business-critical workflows. Think about healthcare environments, energy, manufacturing, or logistics enterprises and industries.
The process would simultaneously deliver calls with an emergency message to a group of responders on the call tree, along with sprinkler location, and guide the responders to escalate the alert and sound alarms through IVR options. This compliance-sensitive workflow is enhanced by the use of intelligent telephony calls for emergency notifications and escalations.
Enterprise IoT Systems Can Seamlessly Integrate with Voice APIs
Voice-led IoT is not just about making automated calls and integrating telephony APIs with IoT sensor devices. It is also about offering deep integration points with IoT dashboards, workflow automation systems, and operational and command/control platforms.
Businesses can define sophisticated IoT conditions that can be matched to dynamic voice response outcomes through the APIs. The responses can also be customized to match various incident scenarios. In addition to recording message alerts, systems can also deploy IVR or DTMF input-based response options for recipients to escalate issues, confirm the receipt, and forward on the alerts.
Final word
Integrating the communication workflows with real-time IoT sensor data and notifications, real-time alerts, intelligent call triggers, and telephony automation across workflows are just some of the key opportunities that voice-led IoT is unleashing for enterprises.
Explore the world of Voice-Led IoT for your business and discover how you can add voice to IoT alerts to receive instant push calls that are acted upon without fail. Contact us to learn more today!
