By Joseph Callahan, CEO — Ciright
The traditional wisdom of the sales business is that potential customers need a physical experience to be convinced to make a purchasing decision. Still, powerful new technology is changing how businesses make sales. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are poised to transform the sales process in incredible ways.
Consumers are likely used to seeing virtual reality and augmented reality technology in action for entertainment purposes. Virtual reality and augmented reality games have become popular because of their unparalleled levels of interactivity and immersion. In recent years, VR and AR technology have also been significantly developed and improved. Experiences that once required expensive, specialized hardware can now be done on desktops or mobile phones. This has allowed VR and AR to move beyond being a fringe technology to being legitimately mainstream.
VR and AR Technologies in Business Settings
This transition has also made virtual and augmented reality technology significantly more useful in business settings. Use cases for AR and VR in the world of business have ranged from sales tools to enabling more immersive, interactive training activities. These applications of this powerful technology will help businesses form the connections they need with customers and employees.
One enterprise application of VR and AR technology that has proven particularly exciting is the digital twin. A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical machine. Although this technology was primarily innovated for the purpose of troubleshooting, businesses are beginning to see the potential of this technology to be applied during the sales process, helping potential customers inspect products they hope to buy before making a purchase.
The concept of digital twins has also enabled the development of virtual showrooms, where businesses can show off their products in the metaverse using VR and AR. As the name implies, virtual showrooms are virtual spaces where companies showcase digital twins of their products. The use of virtual reality and augmented reality technology creates features like allowing customers to visualize a product in their space through AR, which helps with challenges like space considerations and design.
VR and AR can also be powerful tools for presentations. With this technology, presenters are no longer limited by the bounds of space. While in-person presentations at trade shows and other events have maximum capacities because you can only fit so many people into a single room, VR and AR can reach a virtually limitless audience in a way that doesn’t lose the engagement and atmosphere of an in-person event like this.
Why AR and VR are Transforming Business
The main advantage virtual and augmented reality offers to businesses is added convenience. With digital twins and virtual showrooms, potential customers no longer have to enter a brick-and-mortar storefront to see a business’s products. They can view the product from the convenience of their homes, whether through specialized hardware like VR headsets or simply on a desktop computer. When partnered with a customer service tool like live chat, customers can receive a comparable (or improved) level of service to what they would get in person.
Indeed, beyond their convenience, some would argue that virtual reality and augmented reality experiences are superior to tangible experiences in several ways. For example, VR and AR allow a level of interactivity that rivals or even exceeds real-world experiences. In virtual and augmented reality settings, prospective customers can engage with a digital twin of a product in incredible detail. They can inspect individual components in ways that would not be practical if they were examining a physical product — particularly if the product is large in scale.
Virtual and augmented reality technology will have a transformative effect on businesses, from enabling virtually limitless presentations to creating incredible digital showrooms. Offering both convenience and immersion, VR and AR are the future for businesses that hope to connect with their customers and employees in profound ways. Now is the time for businesses to take their businesses from the real world into the virtual one.
— Joseph Callahan is the CEO of Ciright and Director of Portals Organization. Callahan is a seasoned technologist with an insatiable curiosity for the intersection of technology and humanity. His passion lies in exploring the transformative power of spatial computing, AI, and digital twin technology within the business landscape. Founded in 1993, Ciright is a general purpose technology company, which offers information technology services as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) model to businesses, governments, and non for profits.
Published by Mark V.
