The metaverse won't completely replace offline or online channels in terms of customer care, but it will provide a significant new touchpoint.
Although the metaverse is still in its infancy, the world’s top brands are already establishing their presence in the virtual worlds that it enables. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Ford, Louis Vuitton and Marvel are just some of those who are already using it to create virtual experiences.
Experts predict that 30 per cent of companies worldwide will have metaverse-ready products and services by 2026, but what could that look like? And how would you use the Metaverse to provide your consumers with a novel kind of experience?
The term "metaverse" refers to a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an essentially infinite number of users with a sense of personal presence and continuity of data, including identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.
The metaverse is anything that offers real-life experiences within the virtual world, to put it simply. For instance, while you may purchase clothing through a website or smartphone app, you cannot try it on. The metaverse offers the ability to try on clothes (on an admittedly digital version of yourself) but remains in the online world.
The metaverse immerses us in three-dimensional, virtual worlds where we can shop, conduct business, interact with others, learn, socialise, play, and experience things in novel ways—all with the aid of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. This contrasts with the Internet, which we consume in two dimensions. A network of networks makes up the internet. Several worlds are connected in the metaverse.
The beauty of this is that you can utilise the metaverse to provide experiences that aren't feasible anyplace else, in addition to providing traditional experiences that resemble the actual world. For instance, a football team may allow supporters to see videos of previous games from various vantage points or even practise taking that crucial penalty from last night's game.
The metaverse won't completely replace offline or online channels in terms of customer care, but it will provide a significant new touchpoint. Customers will expect businesses to have a presence in the metaverse in the same way that they expect businesses to be accessible on the web or social media. Customers will seek experiences that smoothly link the physical and virtual worlds, therefore this new channel will need to be "glued" to the others.
In actuality, this might resemble entering a digital storefront in the metaverse and being welcomed and assisted by conversational AI-powered avatar-bots, also known as AI-based digital people, who can offer advice, information, and more complicated services like making appointments or retrieving account information. Additionally, the client will anticipate a flawless transition if necessary.
Expect to see businesses providing clients with the chance to experience or test digital duplicates of everything they are selling, from electrical gadgets or locations to workplaces, vehicles, and even aeroplanes. In addition, the metaverse will be utilised to show customers how items operate rather than requiring them to read through complicated instructions. Any form of business transaction should be possible with secure payments, biometrics, and documents transmitted via blockchain when it comes to purchases.
This kind of comprehensive digital experience will soon be in demand, and the technology to deliver it is now very much in place.
Here, the contact centre will be crucial. To provide services that are metaverse-ready, contact centres will need to redefine agent user interfaces and training, among other things. The breadth and substance of processes and apps won't alter significantly, but they will need to adjust to this new touchpoint. For instance, CRMs will need to hold Web 3.0 IDs so that customers may be recognised in the metaverse. In the metaverse, successful customer service and positive customer experiences will follow the same rules as in the physical world.
Creating a better metaverse experience
What we haven’t yet mentioned is the fact that the metaverse will enable personalization at a level not even remotely possible when it comes to other communications channels. Our (recorded and shareable) activities in the metaverse – how we look, the places we visit, the organizations we interact with, and the emotions we’re expressing – are all a great source of information and will provide the bedrock to hyper-personalized services. The information created on the metaverse will surpass the amount of consumer data shared on social media now, allowing businesses to apply predictive analytics and mould experiences far more accurately than before.
The ultimate objective is to use that data in a way that enables customers to self-segment themselves based on their various personalities and select their journeys.
It's no secret that the metaverse is still in its infancy, and before we realise its full potential, there are a number of challenges to overcome. For instance, hardware restrictions are still preventing widespread adoption since headgear for virtual and augmented reality is big, costly, and primarily targeted at a niche market. Volumetric displays, sensors that translate your physical movements into your virtual world avatar, haptic gear, eye-tracking cameras, and related technologies are still pricy and have limited functionality.
A permanent, real-time 3D environment that serves millions or possibly billions of users also calls for computational capacity that has never been seen before. Since virtual worlds were not considered when the underlying Internet protocols ("Internet 3.0") were created, the metaverse most likely requires their redefinition. Standards for other components of the virtual world environment, including standards for 3D objects like avatars and their designs and looks, should also be created. Work also has to be done on data rights, information security, and abuse prevention.
But let's not forget that the internet also had enormous challenges, and it took a long time (and the rise of the smartphone) before it was widely used. In the same manner, we should be forgiving to the metaverse.