When Apple announced its Vision Pro headset in June, the hype around immersive customer experiences picked up after a long-term plateau.
Now, there is an expectation that Apple’s influence will reinvigorate CX creativity and the adoption of extended reality (XR) technologies.
Of course, this will take time, largely due to the initial high price-point of the software.
Nevertheless, there are already immersive experience use cases driving value in customer support and beyond.
In this roundtable, three experts share examples of such use cases, longer-term trends to keep an eye on, and tech partners that can support immersive CX projects. They are:
- Amit Kalley, CEO of Infosys Equinox
- Eric Jorgensen, Vice President of Enterprise EMEA at Zendesk
- Jonathan Maher, Head of Contact Center Specialists at Avaya Europe
Read on to capture their thoughts on this resurging topic, which will likely gain momentum in the coming years.
Share an Immersive Customer Experience Success Story (The Examples)
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) Builds a Customer Happiness Center
Maher: Avaya (with its local partner Moro) and the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) have enabled immersive CX via the DEWAVerse platform.
In this virtual environment, customers have their own private space in the metaverse to see their electricity and water consumption or carbon footprint. They can also interact with live or virtual agents, pay bills, and more.
It’s been so successful that DEWA’s contact centers are now called”customer happiness centers”.
Moreover, customers can contact DEWA using this immersive experience alongside various communication channels, including phone, email, video, and text.
DEWA has integrated all these multi-channel engagements so that customers can seamlessly transition from one medium to another as they engage with live and virtual agents.
Finally, Avaya utilized AI in building a dynamic workflow that can identify, assign, and prioritize registered callers so they receive the appropriate level of service.
A Food & Beverage Retailer Creates a One-Click Commerce Mechanism
Kalley: Infosys Equinox collaborated with a prominent global food and beverage (F&B) retailer specializing in cheese, condiments, drink mixes, and more items.
Despite active consumer engagement on their digital platforms, they spotted an unmet need: to guide consumers in crafting recipes with their products.
Infosys swiftly addressed this gap by implementing its pre-built microservices, facilitating recipe assistance, and extending the functionality to enable consumers to order all necessary ingredients with a single click.
The integration with leading online retailers and quick commerce providers resulted in a 20 percent surge in site visits and a substantial increase in orders through the one-click mechanism.
Beyond this direct-to-consumer capability, Infosys established a digital hub for a cohesive customer experience across its extensive network of 250+ global brand sites.
Liberty Leverages AI to Close the Gaps Between Customers and Service Agents
Jorgensen: Liberty, London’s luxury department store, is adding AI to its service operations to build more immersive customer experiences.
First, it leveraged AI for ticket classification and routing across multiple channels, including phone, chat, and email.
Then, the brand used AI to accurately identify customer intent and sentiment, directing issues to the right agents and resulting in speedy resolutions.
Next, Liberty plans to extend AI’s role in tackling ticket backlogs, automating routing based on agent skills and customer needs, which will cut manual triage efforts.
Name an Immersive CX Trend That Will Gain More Momentum (The Trends)
AR/VR Opens Up New Commerce Opportunities
Kalley: Brands and retailers have more opportunities than ever to engage with consumers across diverse channels – and those touchpoints will expand further.
These channels encompass social platforms, conversational interfaces, voice interactions, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), the metaverse, and even digital kiosks in physical locations like in-store or pop-up stores, alongside participation in marketplaces and super apps.
Ensuring a genuine omnichannel customer experience involves being present wherever and whenever customers engage.
A noteworthy facilitator of this trend is the adoption of composable commerce architecture.
Such an innovative approach allows brands and retailers to create content once and seamlessly deploy it across all channels simultaneously, contributing to a cohesive and adaptable consumer engagement strategy.
Virtual Reality Turns Into Just Another Channel
Maher: Apple Vision Pro is an example of a spatial computing solution, providing a gateway for immersive experiences – which brands will strive to seize upon.
Yet, from a CX point of view, the experiences must integrate into companies’ multi-channel CX offerings, just as any other customer touchpoint.
After all, it’s a new medium that customers might want to use to engage with an organization – and brands should make the same service considerations as any other channel.
Businesses Become More Strategic Around the Individual Customer
Jorgensen: With AI working in real-time to analyze and offer recommendations based on style and preference, companies have a new opportunity to connect with customers and provide interactions that feel made for them.
Zendesk research shows that immersive CX yields a 77 percent positive ROI for businesses and can craft seamless, genuine interactions where customers feel valued.
However, if businesses get this wrong and fail to meet the growing customer expectations of authenticity and personalization, they risk the opportunity to foster stronger customer connections.
Embracing such trends empowers businesses to offer tailored interactions across channels with a deep understanding of customer needs and pain points.
How Does Your Business Enable More Immersive Customer Experiences (The Providers)
Infosys
Kalley: Infosys excels in creating immersive customer experiences for a diverse clientele, aiming to stand out, attract, and retain customers. Some of the use cases it’s enabling include:
- VR/AR technologies that enable new omnichannel experiences: Implementing VR/AR technologies for a leading US jewelry chain allowed customers to create customized designs and virtually try on jewelry, yielding significant online engagements and reducing inventory costs in physical stores.
- Social Influencers and Live Commerce: When collaborating with a major health and beauty brand, Infosys empowered social influencers to promote and sell products through customized websites, leveraging their community for an engaging experience.
- Endless Aisle: Partnering with a leading global sportswear brand, Infosys implemented “endless aisle” capabilities in over 800 stores, providing real-time inventory visibility. That allowed consumers and associates to easily reserve or order out-of-stock products for delivery at the store, home, or in another preferred location.
Zendesk
Jorgensen: Whether through lifelike chatbots or seamless conversation shifts across communication channels, Zendesk focuses on acknowledging and acting upon customer needs.
By embracing AI advancements, it offers immersive experiences that elevate customer acquisition, loyalty, and profitability while integrating teams around CX to drive operational efficiencies.
Its with Liberty is an excellent example of this. Since integrating Zendesk into their customer experience team, Liberty’s CSAT (customer satisfaction) score increased nine percent year-over-year.
Avaya
CX Today’s David Dungay caught up with the Avaya team last year to discuss its proposition for the metaverse. Check out the video below to find out what they had to say.
Miss out on our previous CX Today roundtable? If so, check it out here: CPaaS In Customer Experience: Examples, Trends, & Providers
