Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
A GLIMPSE OF TOMORROW
In May 2016, ebay, Australia’s largest marketplace and iconic Australian retailer Myer joined forces to create the world’s first virtual reality department store. More than 12 500 products from Myer can be browsed, selected and added to a cart.
It was important not to just replicate the ecommerce experience in a virtual environ- ment, says Jooman Park, managing director of ebay Australia and New Zealand.
Using shopticals (specially designed virtual reality viewers) in combination with an app, shoppers are able to select areas of interest at the beginning of the experience. As shoppers move through the store, smart technology suggests products. They can browse using ebay Sight Search: by simply holding their gaze on a product, it is selected and automatically floats towards them. The top 100 products are available to view in 3D. Locking eyes on information icons brings up full product specifications, as well as price, availability and shipping details. Purchasing is as simple as holding one’s eyes on the “Add to Basket” icon to complete purchases via the ebay app.
relevant and personalised the approach is. Customers prefer to make purchases or resolve a service issue without speaking directly with a member of the sales or customer service team, they say.
From VR dressing rooms on a retailer’s website to intelligent chatbots on a telecoms company’s service portal, merchants are already finding ways to make the customer experience more convenient and familiar to consumers whose primary communication platforms have become messaging apps and social networks.
Ad blockers get smarter – and so do ads Besides changing the way we shop, AI might yet prove to be the saviour of the advertising industry, says Daryn Mason, senior director, CX Applications, Oracle.
Few people welcome the barrage of messages being pushed at them online, but that does not mean they wish to block them all, he says.
Today’s relatively crude ad blockers will evolve into more sophisticated, smarter, targeted AI brokers that can filter through ads with even greater granularity based on a deep understanding of a buyer’s needs and online activity.
Soon, buyers will begin to build a virtual profile that clearly outlines which products and services they are seeking, and which is then left to inter- act with brands directly before bringing back only those communications that are relevant. By 2020, the customer experience will largely be defined by two-way discussions between “intelligent” software rather than by a unidirectional flow of promotional content, Mason says.
One particularly rich source of valuable data is social media.
Nearly half of sales and marketing leaders admit that customers and prospects increasingly want to interact with their brand over social media. They also recognise that news travels fast on social networks, and that this has become both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, when a customer makes a noise about a positive brand experience, this can quickly spread to the masses and generate instant brand equity. On the other, news of a negative experience will travel just as quickly and can seriously damage a brand’s image. According to 40 percent of sales and marketing leaders, word of mouth has become more crucial to their success in the age of social media.
Oracle’s Cloud services have helped organisations to be more
agile in responding to customers, the company says. For instance, General Motors enabled its service teams to gain a better view of customers based on their social media activity, including their previous purchases and service requests so that they can resolve issues more quickly and efficiently. Audio equipment maker D+M Group, whose iconic brands include Denon, Marantz, Boston Acoustics and HEOS, spotted and fixed a recent technical with its HEOS wireless speaker before other customers even realised there was a problem, based on a single customer interaction. Alerted via the cloud, the product design team developed a fix and contacted affected customers.
Ultimately, let’s not overlook one important observation: although we may be about to say goodbye to the traditional human-to-human conversation with the helpful shop assistant or salesman that helps us make up our minds when we shop, we’ll still want a personalised experience. If companies make optimal use of VR and chatbots can help achieve that, not only the customer wins: companies also gain a significant strategic advantage. A recent study from Harvard Business Review found that the 15 per cent of companies that are ahead in their use of technology and data intelligence have grown more quickly in the past year than their competitors and are better positioned for future growth.
“Having the right data at their fingertips will enable organisations to deliver a better, more personalised experience to their customers and deliver the right message to the right person at the right time on the right channel – through virtual reality, on social or otherwise,” says the report. It adds, hopefully: “Customers will value a smart, helpful, personalised interaction regardless of how it’s delivered, so there’s hope for humans yet.”