How Virtual Reality (VR) Will Affect Customer Service – Dwayne Charrington
Customer service is becoming ever more dynamic than it has ever been. And its future seems to be dipped in technological sophistication. If you pay a little attention, you can foresee it as well, given the current trends. For example, the use of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) is on the rise.
As we continue to discover their potential in improving customer service. It is like moving up to a whole new level of creating delightful customer experiences.
There is another aspect of technology, just as significant. Designed to bring a sense of realism to people’s interaction with products when they are not really there. The intent is to not only give product interaction a new meaning by way of virtual realism but to bring depth to it which mimics the experience of interacting with a real product.
Marketers continuously vie for radical technologies mostly due to one aspect of the modern-day business – creating involving experiences for customers. It is also the sense of competitive spirit to triumph over others in the market, which is leading us to use revolutionary techniques in improving customer service. For many, it is also an obvious progression to keep up with changing times.
Say Hello to Virtual Reality, and its cousin, Augmented Reality
What are these technologies and why are they so awesome?
Virtual Reality (VR) is like watching a 3D movie on IMAX, but much better. This technology creates a completely computer-generated artificial world around a person, putting them right in the middle of it. It’s like being inside a movie or a video game, quite literally. That virtual world is a simulation of the real world environment or something completely different.
Augmented Reality (AR), on the other hand, displays computer-generated objects in an actual environment. Currently, this can be largely experienced through your smartphone.
For example, an AR application on your smartphone will show a virtual pen right next to your laptop on your work desk. Another example is, you are viewing a computer-generated sofa in your living room, through your smartphone.
The possibilities these technologies are throwing up are hugely promising. So much can be learnt and experienced without putting a person in harm’s way.
VR and AR can be used for various purposes like in education, medical practices, construction and architecture, and of course, in entertainment. Digi-Capital expects the VR industry to generate $150 billion in revenue by 2020.
VR and AR are bound to improve various facets of customer interaction with businesses. However, these technologies are still in a nascent stage to be utilized as customer service tools.
Things are being experimented with and there is a growing realization among software developers to learn and expand their work in this field. Here are 3 exciting ways AR & VR will affect customer service and customer experience
#1. Product demos can be truly immersive and interactive
Virtual Reality is about creating immersive experiences. Let’s take a product brochure that contains multiple images of a certain product along with all kinds of descriptive information.
Imagine experiencing that brochure in the form of a VR program. For example, you visit an automobile showroom to check out a new vehicle, but your favourite model is not available on display. While you can get all the information about it from a sales executive and product brochure, you are left disappointed.
However, a product demo in virtual reality can bring realism to the experience even when a product is not really there. Specifically, a person can see and understand the actual dimensions of a vehicle. Virtual reality customer experience is bound to play a key role in how companies attract people and create customers out of them.
What’s more, a VR experience is interactive in nature. Depending on your business requirements or the product you’re selling, they can be tailored to interact with the customers in a certain way.
Continuing the automobile example, a person can “move around” or “sit inside” the vehicle and get a proper idea of its real-life appearance at different angles. A product can also be demoed for multiple situations and locations. It can greatly reduce costs related to logistics and travel.
In fact, Toyota launched its hybrid car C-HR using ZeroLight VR. Using this VR experience, Toyota was able to provide a lifelike experience of the car even before it was actually presented to the public.
A person was not only able to interact with the car in a normal manner, like opening/closing doors, boot, move inside the cabin, but Toyota went one step ahead. The company put a real car seat and synced its position precisely with the digital seat inside the VR experience so that people could sit on the seat and actually get a proper feel inside the VR world.
Meanwhile, applications for AR are even more interesting in this situation, as you can actually make out how a particular product would look in a physical location. For example, you can check out where to place a dining table in your living room and how it would look, without actually doing it.
#2. Effective Resolution Of Product Issues
Resolving product issues can be a prolonged process. The traditional way of explaining an issue to a support agent can many times not yield positive results. An issue could be a bit too complicated for a customer to communicate it properly, or an agent could simply misunderstand the issue entirely. Virtual and Augmented Reality make a lot of sense here.
Using AR, an issue can be accurately communicated to an agent. For example, by pointing a smartphone to a product, a customer can highlight and communicate the issue to an agent in real time. Virtual text can be displayed to identify various parts of a product, which an agent would recognize but a customer may not. Similarly, agents can guide customers to fix issues much more effectively using AR applications.
This could actually help in making the whole help desk process more efficient. Tickets recorded in a help desk software will be cleared at a faster rate. In fact, resorting to AR customer support may enable companies to use their help desk software only for issues that require assistance from multiple departments. Whereas, AR customer support can be used where an agent can directly help customers fix an issue.
As more and more companies begin to use it, virtual reality customer service will change the way we assist customers.
#3. Employee Training
Training sessions for employees can be made more engaging using VR and AR applications compared to, let’s say, a Powerpoint presentation! Companies can even emulate practical sessions using these technologies. Remote training sessions can be similarly benefitted.
Furthermore, information can be loaded and viewed in various languages so that multilingual training sessions can be conducted at the same time.
The Potential of VR/AR is immense
Interacting with a digital rendition of anything existing in real life is always an interesting idea. One of the coolest things to look forward to in VR applications is the use of haptic feedback, where you get a sense of actual touch when interacting with something in digital form.
The most common implementation of haptic feedback is in smartphones, for example, when you get a gentle, momentary vibration response while typing on the screen. But this is easier to execute in a smartphone because its hardware and the vibration mechanism can be tuned to operate depending on various finger touches on the screen.
However, it is quite challenging to pull it off in virtual reality where everything is computer generated, and you’re basically interacting with air! This is an exciting arena and even the thought of experiencing haptic feedback in virtual reality generates great excitement!
Technology becomes affordable when it is mass-produced
Virtual Reality is a very young technology with supposedly limitless potential. While Augmented Reality requires the real-world environment to be experienced, VR completely breaks any limitations or challenges associated with reality.
Depending on the level of its usage, VR can be a highly expensive and complicated technology to use. The benefits are clear though and various industries have already begun experimenting with it. The Virtual Reality industry is growing rapidly, and the global market, including AR, is expected to grow to $209.2 billion by 2022.
Virtual Reality is inspiring since it is safe and promises to make many experiences possible for people that are otherwise way beyond reach for one reason or the other.
