EXTEND THE REALITY OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

According to the Ultimate 2021 report, 59% of customers chose customer experience over product and price as a key brand differentiator. Contact Center channels have evolved alongside technological innovation, and new ways of communication and social interaction are being implemented.

Among these channel evolution trends, we highlight:

• From phone to digital.
• From direct contact to engagement through apps and social media.
• Mobility.
• Voice will remain the main choice for customer engagement for some time, but others are catching up (some faster than others), such as email and chat. Voice support technologies are also evolving (VoIP, WebRTC).

Communication apps and social media are essential means for today’s human relationship. It would be inevitable for companies to use them for business communication and customer engagement as well. Every modern Contact Center today has a facebook or whatsapp availability strategy.

Mobile phones and smartphones provide the freedom to communicate when and where you need to. The ability for Contact Centers to provide this kind of flexibility to their customers has become a commodity.

These evolutions are already part of modern Contact Centers, but there is a missing element that will play a critical role in the future customer engagement market: video and animation will lead to more immersive Contact Center experiences.

XR BENEFITS FOR CONTACT CENTERS

Video capabilities in the Contact Center have been around for some time, but without real global success. There are some good reasons for this:

• Video for what purpose? – This is the main question: why should I use video in my interaction with the Contact Center? To see a sharp dressed agent on the other side? There must be compelling reasons to use video.
• Privacy and inhibition – Video is somewhat intrusive. It can inhibit the customer’s willingness to express their feelings regarding a given subject. This is not good for the customer, who avoids using this ability, and for the company, who does not get total Customer satisfaction feedback.

So how should video be used in the context of a Contact Centers and be a real added value in customer service processes?

As usually said, a picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth even more. In the customer support of a given solution, being an equipment or Software, the possibility of showing a real time video of this solution to the support agent, can be of great value, acting as a guided or self-service tool to quickly solve the problem, being it an operational or maintenance/repair problem.

This is where Extended Reality (XR) – The set of technologies that allow to present contextualized virtual components to real environment (AR – Augmented Reality), that can be extended, in the limit, to a complete virtualization of the environment (VR – Virtual Reality) – presents itself as an important capability.

Instead of just receiving indications with the video stream and providing voice guidance, which can be a tiring, time-consuming and misleading process for complex solutions and processes, agents can use AR to present elements overlaid on the video, such as arrows, signs and text, draw circles and X’s, etc., and even present step-by-step operational and maintenance procedures, clearly showing at each step what needs to be done.

HOW CAN AN XR BASED CHANNELS BE INTEGRATED IN CONTACT CENTERS

Like any other Contact Center interaction, XR-based interactions need to be:

• Recognizable – Uniquely identified as XR channel, as well as in terms of its originating party, for routing, monitoring, and measuring purposes.
• Routable – Based on the channel used and the originating party’s information, flexible routing based on scripts and Database information should be possible to deliver it to the right agent at the right time.
• Processable – Based on the business processes and applications applied and integrated, it should be able to be seamlessly processed to achieve the required business outcome.
• Monitorable and Measurable – Contact Center solutions are seen by operations primarily as productivity tools, these interactions and channels must be able to be monitored in real time and their results and KPIs must be collected and processed, internally or externally in Business intelligence tools, and be presented in dashboards and reports.

By design, most modern communication solutions, such as of course the XR enabled ones, include the features that make them easily integrated with any business and Contact Center solution:

• VoIP/webRTC based communications.
• Web based user interfaces accessible via browser or mobile App.
• Support of web services APIs for seamless integration.

USE CASES AND EVOLUTION TOWARDS METAVERSE

XR technologies are a reality today and new devices and products are released on a daily basis. Several concrete use cases are obvious for the use of XR channels in several aspects such as:

B2C Contact Center implementations:

• Telecom Service Providers – for remote support of more complex equipment in the households, the telecom CPEs are the most obvious use cases. Having a remote expert helping, with intuitive XR tools, to operate and troubleshoot routers and IPTV boxes is of great added value.
• Software – traditional SW support tools, such as co-browsing, remote desktop etc. are intrusive and can present security risks. AR can be a seamless and non-intrusive way to lead to navigate web pages and applications correctly towards a particular operational outcome.
• Auto insurance companies – AR remote assistance solutions provide a huge benefit to help insurance customers with car breakdowns and remote expert examinations in case of accidents.

B2B Contact Center implementations:

In addition to remote expert-based AR solutions, VR use cases can be of great help for operation, training and problem-solving as they can provide abstraction models of physical objects allowing users to manipulate and visually access parts of it that would otherwise be impossible. It can be used for:

• Support in healthcare equipment for Hospitals and Clinics
• Industrial equipment for factories
• Agriculture (tractors and production equipment)
• Transport (all types of vehicles)
• Etc.

IT Helpdesk and internal support

Contact Centers for internal helpdesks can also benefit greatly from XR solutions, such as:

• IT Helpdesks – Supporting all kind of IT equipment and even Corporate Sw.
• Emergency paramedics – Supported in emergency situations by doctors.
• Emergency teams on power companies, Oil & Gas.

XR Is the technological foundation that will allow customer engagement to enter the Metaverse.

The implementation of highly personalized and sophisticated Metaverse virtual places for brand awareness, product marketing and shopping as well as customer service, will provide a more immersive, intuitive and, ultimately, entertaining way for consumers to engage with their favorite brands, and will play a major role in the future of Contact Centers.