Incorporating new technologies that bring virtual worlds to life — not just the Metaverse but also mixed or augmented reality — can help enterprises create healthy workplace cultures and vibrant customer touchpoints. As a result, many key metrics can be improved, from employee job satisfaction and retention to customer experience and loyalty.
The Challenge of Building Cohesive Cultures with Far-flung Teams
Many remote employees fear they won’t be given the same opportunities as their in-person coworkers, and this anxiety makes sense on an intuitive level. If you’re in the same room as others, you can often feel confident that others have registered your presence, and it’s easier to get attention. If you’re logging in remotely via video conferencing, however, the only people who note your attendance are those who take the time to look carefully at the screen and interact with you.
Indeed, a recent study found that bosses actually do have this bias. Ninety-six percent of US executives confessed they notice the contributions of in-person team members more than those who work offsite.
In addition, when people report from different geographical locations, casual water-cooler moments just don’t happen. Instead, meetings tend to be scheduled and more formal in character, which not only creates distance between coworkers but also limits the number of serendipitous conversations.
How Virtual Worlds Can Bring Teams Together
Mixed reality, augmented reality, and other kinds of virtual worlds can help solve this problem by giving a sense of presence to folks who aren’t actually there.
For instance, a large company could create its own Metaverse where employees can congregate and hang out, such as a virtual lunchroom or town hall where people can come and go at will. By providing a communal area where everyone can drop in and have casual or accidental conversations with coworkers, the company could create buzz and encourage the unexpected cross-fertilization of ideas.
Providing this kind of space can also help remote workers connect with other team members, bringing more parity to the hybrid workforce. Additionally, virtual worlds can create onboarding and other training experiences that are more compelling and effective.
Virtual Worlds Can Improve Training
New employees tend to formulate an opinion of their employer quickly — typically within the first few weeks. During that time, they come to understand what the company stands for, and based on those early experiences, they decide whether or not to support it.
Quality onboarding experiences are vital for connecting with and motivating new hires. Unlike traditional remote onboarding, which usually involves boring tutorials combined with quizzes, virtual worlds open portals to incredible settings and multi-sensory stimulation. The effect can be downright magical as training lessons can become more interactive and engaging through these technologies, allowing people to become wholly engrossed.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion training could also benefit from this innovative approach. For example, imagine you’re a white male in the workforce (like me), and you could experience what it’s like to be frequently interrupted or have others give credit for your ideas to someone else who said the same thing later. Virtual reality can give people a taste of some of the biases and microaggressions that people from marginalized or underrepresented groups commonly experience at work.
How Virtual Worlds Can Improve the Customer Experience
Virtual worlds can also improve the customer experience. Abercrombie and Fitch is an excellent example of how in-person shopping experiences can be designed to appeal to consumers from the minute they walk in until they leave. Every element — including how the store looks and smells — is controlled to ignite the senses and immerse the person in the brand.
By incorporating augmented reality, retailers could create a compelling, bespoke experience for people shopping from home. While in-person shopping is physically constrained to the space itself, embracing virtual worlds enables similar techniques without barriers. The more developed this technology becomes, the more variables and senses it can leverage for a better or even a customized experience based on a shopper’s profile.
Virtual solutions can also work for businesses that offer services. For instance, you can host live demonstrations in fantastic virtual spaces or have avatars present customer testimonials. Think about how vibrant your website would be if it were deployed in 3D rather than 2D.
The Future Requires Digital Transformation Today
While the idea of incorporating virtual worlds or mixed reality might sound intimidating, the important thing is to keep your mind open to the idea. Using these new technologies isn’t all or nothing.
Just start somewhere. First, understand what your employees or customers would actually find helpful and can be expected to adopt voluntarily. Identify a problem that virtual or mixed reality could effectively solve for your target audience, and give it a shot. Another practical way to begin is simply to use these technologies to augment something you’re already doing.
Today’s workplace is more remote than ever. Companies and organizations that embrace digital transformation will be best positioned to meet the challenges of tomorrow, which is why ventures of all kinds should start incorporating virtual, mixed, and augmented reality to gain an advantage over late-adopting competitors.
