How AR and VR Will Enhance Customer Experience
Technology plays a crucial role in our lives and it looks like there are new techs emerging all the time. AR and VR are among the technologies that have made the most noise in the past few years. While usually associated with the gaming world, these techs have the potential to impact much more than the gaming industry. In fact, they’ve already started to revolutionize customer experience and chances are they’ll bring even more change to it. But how exactly are AR and VR enhancing customer experience? Read on to find out.
Enhancing general customer experience
Customers are always looking to buy that perfect product or service that suits all their needs. They’ll choose that specific product or service even if it means spending more or driving to a store that’s not the closest one to their home. The problem is that customers often can’t decide what exactly they’re looking for. Let’s imagine you’re buying a piece of furniture for your living room. You may have a general idea of what you want, but the only way to see how a piece of furniture fits into your home is to bring it over. That’s how things used to be before AR and VR were introduced. Giants like IKEA now allow you to see how their furniture fits into your home using AR. All you have to do is point at the spot in your home where you plan to place it and voila. Other industries that can benefit from these techs in this sense include real estate and safety equipment industries.
New and improved user manuals
We all experience this problem at some point. You buy a gadget or appliance for your home only to realize you have no idea how to use it. In situations like this, user manuals can act as real lifesavers. However, sometimes it’s tough to explain everything there is about a piece of technology through a traditional manual. This is why companies have come up with a way to use AR to create new and improved user manuals. For example, just take a look at what the people behind Hyundai are doing. With their AR manual, it’s enough to point at the car part you want to learn more about and the information will pop up. This means you can learn about your vehicle on the go and get the information easier than ever. It really is a win-win situation when you think about it. The customer gets the information they need and the manufacturer offers customer service even after the purchase has been made.
Identifying and reporting malfunctions
Unfortunately, even brand new products sometimes come with malfunctions. Dealing with those malfunctions can be extremely time-consuming and no one wants to wait for days to get the product they’ve just bought. The folks behind big companies have come up with a way to deal with these malfunctions in a more timely fashion. They created AR apps you can use to report the issue they’re experiencing to a service agent. Let’s say you’ve bought a malfunctioning coffeemaker. Instead of using a real coffee cup to show the agent what’s wrong, you can do it using AR technology. This will result in less mess in your kitchen and the agent getting a better idea of what the problem is.
Improved VR graphics
As mentioned earlier, VR is often associated with the gaming world. After all, that’s where it can demonstrate most of its potential. Gamers have always dreamed about stepping into their favourite virtual worlds and with VR their wish came true. While VR games have been around for a while, the graphics didn’t really catch up with the tech. That’s why gamers are still waiting for the VR experience they always dreamed about. The good news is that in the past few years, VR graphics have improved significantly and VR games are making more noise. Just take a glance at releases such as No Man’s Sky and Lone Echo II and you’ll get the idea. If you’re still not convinced, just check out some of the finest virtual reality casinos around. Virtual poker and blackjack tables now look exactly the same as those in Las Vegas.
Even more customer interaction
The way people shop has completely changed in the past few decades. Ever since ordering stuff online became a thing, people started visiting brick-and-mortar stores less and less. While online shopping comes with many benefits, the biggest problem with it is that there’s no customer interaction. In other words, you can ask a shop assistant for their opinion if you can’t decide between two items. Or if you need extra information about an item, the only thing you can do is browse the web yourself. Aiming to improve customer experience, companies in all industries decided it’s time to change this. At the moment, there are chatbots you can turn to if you want additional information. However, it looks that VR shop assistants will arrive soon and take your online shopping experience to the next level. Just imagine taking a VR house tour with a virtual assistant taking you through it.
The bottom line
AR and VR technologies are here and they’re bringing some major changes to customer experience. The way we shop will continue to evolve and these two techs will play a huge role in it. We can only imagine what’s next when it comes to using AR and VR in this sense.