The customer service sector has changed dramatically in the last few years, with the growing popularity of ecommerce and social media being a driving communicator between brands and customers. With technology advancements occurring regularly, it is no wonder companies are finding new and wonderful ways to connect with their customer bases.
Once advancement is the rise in the metaverse – augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). From virtual learning environments to 3D modelled products, the internet is changing the customer experience.
Here, we will explore some of the impacts that the metaverse will have on customer service and the customer experience.
Brand interactions
One way the metaverse will start impacting customer service is through the interactions consumers will have the brand before, after, and during purchases. The metaverse can offer an immersive shopping experience from the comfort of your living room – including diagrams and model creations of products. There might also be the opportunity for customers to walk through a shop without having to leave their home, as well as interact with virtual shopping assistants throughout. These can be robotic assistants who can answer a range of commonly asked questions or hologram-projected assistants who regularly monitor the “shop floors”.
Businesses can also use the metaverse to contribute to a virtual economy and drive loyalty. The introduction of the metaverse has also seen intangible additions, such as cryptocurrencies and the creation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). NFTs can be used to increase customer interaction and promote loyalty schemes to specific brands, improving the customer experience.
Personalisation
As with social media, the metaverse has a great opportunity for brands to increase customer personalisation and targeted marketing. The reality capabilities of the metaverse means that brands can design their own interactive and immersive worlds which represent their brand identity in a way that traditional marketing, such as video ads, cannot do.
This can be personalised down to the customer’s own home – showing them how your products will look within their own environments. This is crucial as 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand who offers a tailored experience and what can be more personalised than bringing brands and 3D products into their home?
Better support
The metaverse can also help expand your company’s omnichannel support. Omnichannel support is the ability to communicate with customers and handle complaints through multiple channels – whether this be live chat, email, phone call, or another form. By adding metaverse capabilities, you are offering your customers a wider range of communication points and improving the customer experience. This will offer your customers face-to-face human interaction, no matter the location.
The quality of customer service, and complaints handling, you can offer might also be improved by the introduction of the metaverse. In fact, a study has shown that the information a human can store is 70% greater when using augmented reality (AR) than not, meaning that your company could make a significant difference to your customers by using the metaverse. The metaverse allows you to demonstrate solutions, products, and discuss troubleshooting easier than a lengthy email correspondence might.
Provide training
Further quality can be provided through internal use of the metaverse. Virtual reality can be a useful tool when it comes to company training, such as customer service agencies or company sales teams. Adopting augmented learning environments means you can teach new recruits from multiple locations and monitor their progress.
By improving your training programmes, you can make sure that customers are handled with the best care possible. Better service training can improve your customer’s satisfaction – leading to happy, and loyal, customers. And outstanding customer service can actually lead to a rise in the desire to buy, with consumers spending 17% more after good interactions with customer support.
Whether it is in-house, from your employee’s house, training or bringing the shop to the customer, the metaverse can improve the customer experience tenfold. The quality and speed of customer service can be improved through the introduction of these different realities and by offering a new way to connect, more customers can experience brands in exciting and innovative ways.
- Kura is a contact centre company based in Glasgow, Scotland. It provides outsourced contact centre services and software, including customer service, retention, win-back, up-sell, cross-sell, web chat, complaints handling, appointment setting, general customer management and software development.
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