Gartner opines that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social, and/or entertainment.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard the word ‘Metaverse’ in the last six months, I’d be damn rich! Ever since Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta or what many are calling the future of the internet, it instantly became the talk of every town and industry.
So much so that the term is even making rounds in the CX space. But the question arises—are we familiar with it in the context of Metaverse customer service, or is it just being bandied about?
If this makes you ponder, then this blog post is for you. We’ll encapsulate the Metaverse and what it means for customer service. Also, if done right, how can it take your customer service to a higher echelon?
First Things First—What is Metaverse?
Don’t worry! I am certainly going to avoid ‘technobabble’ here. 😀
Just imagine a virtual world where a visitor gains an individual presence or spatial awareness right from the comfort of their couch in the physical world. This is what the Metaverse is.
To enter the Meta universe, we can leverage immersive technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), and so on. Interesting, right?
Did you know? Statista report states that the global AR, VR & MR market reached 28 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, rising to over 250 billion U.S. dollars by 2028.
Also, the third generation of the internet—Web 3.0—is set to be more user-friendly, high on security, and decentralization-focused. The Metaverse era just glimmers in the emerging world of Web 3.0 or Semantic Web or Spatial Web.
In fact, the Global Web 3.0 Blockchain Market accounted for US$ 1231.54 million in 2020 and is estimated to be US$ 87761.35 million by 2030. No wonder tech giants are ready to dive into this newfound universe.
Unveiling The Frontrunners of the Metaverse Moment
In a trice, the Metaverse has become a playground for brands. Let’s find out:
- Microsoft’s massive US$68.7 billion attempt to acquire the gaming lord Activision Blizzard indicated the organization’s desire to enter the Spatial Web space.
- Roblox has become quite a success with 50 million daily active users and 200 million monthly active users. No wonder, Nike teamed up with Roblox to create a virtual space named NIKETOWN.
- Fast Food chains like Wendy’s and Chipotle are not ready to stay behind. While the former entered the interactive world with “Wendyverse”, the latter opened a virtual restaurant—Chipotle Boorito Maze—where it gave away $1 million in free burritos during its Halloween’ Boorito’ promotion.
- Not so long ago, the beverage behemoth, Coca-Cola, auctioned off virtual ‘loot boxes’ over 72 hours as a single “loot box” via the OpenSea marketplace.
- Fashion houses such as Selfridges and Giuseppe Zanotti, organized their first-ever Metaverse fashion show. The audience could make purchases of physical clothes [shipped in real life] & virtual items in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) at the stores.
Well, the list is never-ending but I am pretty sure we’ve discovered how all walks of industry are leveraging the Metaverse at full throttle. It’s time to move on to the segment where we unveil how the service industry can take advantage of the whole wide world of the Spatial Web. Let’s get cracking, shall we?
Metaverse Customer Experience: A Step towards Success
Imagine a digital 3D space where you can provide blazing-fast customer service and assist with all sorts of queries in real-time at any customer journey touch point. In simple words, Metaverse is set to open the doors to the next level of hyper-personalization in customer service.
Wouldn’t meeting your customers as a support agent in the comfort of your home or couch be an enthralling experience? With just a virtual reality headset on, you can feel their spatial awareness and understand their concerns better.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Ahead, we’ll touch upon some otherworldly enhancements that Metaverse will introduce.
1. Deploy the One-to-many Model
While geographically dispersed users have brewed storms as challenges in the past, the Metaverse is going to help service enterprises batten down the hatches. It brings visitors to the same virtual environment, in the same virtual storefront, with the same products or services. All this makes it easier to announce a new product launch, give a walkthrough of the new feature release, provide step-by-step activation instructions, and so on.
2. Design a Virtual Customer Journey
Paint a picture of the customer journey in the Metaverse and find the answers to the questions like which new strategies are popular among customers? How are they reacting to certain changes? What places do you think will interest them? Is the virtual storefront keeping them engaged enough? Are they providing real-time feedback? Companies can chalk out unique and informed decisions based on this data.
3. Accelerate Onboarding and Training
Metaverse is somewhat a jack of all trades. It not only takes virtual meetings to the next level but also eases the process of onboarding and training. New recruits can get to know their team and mingle with them better. Also, virtual onboarding comforts them to ask questions face-to-face and get hands-on training without leaving the comfort of their home.
4. Easier Hosting of Events & Better Engagement
Not every customer likes to attend your events in-person. Most of them prefer virtual connects, thanks to the pandemic and digitization wave. Fret not; Metaverse comes to the rescue. It enables you to leverage unlimited space, top-notch decors, entertaining activities, and more. All this entices your customers to be a part of the events and drives engagement.
The Burning Question—Is Your Organization Ready to Take on the CX World With the Metaverse?
While Metaverse is still in its fancy, umpteen forward-thinking service organizations are planning to make a stab at it. For others, it is still a matter of little TBD.
However, cognitive technology is still a hot topic in the SaaS space and helping enterprises to take giant strides toward futuristic support & success. One of the providers is SearchUnify.
Want this white-glove support for your service organization? Request a demo to learn more! Till then, have a happy and productive day! 🙂
