Why AR VR must be an integral part of every Retailer’s transformation strategy
Digital transformation continues to be the theme of every Industry and therefore every product in today’s time and age. There is plenty of talk on better content and by virtue of that better experience in the Retail Industry which is no exception. Retailers are exploring a variety of initiatives from an experience-through-content standpoint.
Luxury brands are luring their customers into a virtual and fantastic universe of their latest collection, some are allowing customers to create their avatars and overlay the catalog on them, others are trying virtual try-ons, some are exploring augmented reality for certain item categories, few are trying 3-dimensional rendering aiming for an immersive experience. In summary, AR VR technologies are being experimented at various levels.
Enough and more stats showcase that these technologies are here to stay and are already providing their share of return-on-experience to the early adopters — better conversion, reduced return, increased sales to name a few. However, there is yet a Retailer who has thought of AR technology as a game changer and has made it a central theme of his transformation strategy. Invariably, the experience becomes patchy and the real impact of it fades away. Like what happened when the retail customer forced retailers to merge the online and the offline leading to BOPIS (buy online pick in store), SFS (ship from store), STH (ship to home) models.
In this blog, I therefore share a simple and an elegant way to adopt these technologies and urge retailers to make AR VR an inherent part of every facet of the retail business right from eCom to warehouse to graphics designers to copywriters to personnel processing returns. Following illustration showcases a simple AR rendering service that wraps around your traditional or headless content management system and can deliver immersive content to everyone in the retail ecosystem.
On Digital Channels, clicks ridden browse-through-checkout journey on the product list page, product detailed page will now be transformed into an explorative exercise. Because the customer instead of clicking on various images to understand different angles of the product is now rotating the image via a single click and curiously exploring it.
At the Store, the customer and associate interactions becomes more interactive where they might explore color variants, alternatives and complimenting items more effectively ergo higher conversion rates and cross-selling and up-selling.
On External Channels such as marketplaces and social channels, these images become influencers drawing old and new customers alike to explore, buy and subscribe to the digital touchpoints.
Content producers including designers, translators and copywriters can engage in creating enriched content that is more relatable, visually appealing, and descriptive that the customer is left with no further questions and must buy it invariably. It also provisions content producers to think about innovative ways to engage the customer with item compositions, ensemble promotions, banners, landing pages which will lead to ripples of sales.
Customer leverage Call Centers when there is an out of the ordinary scenario which ranges from wrong sizes and colors to damages to rejections, returns or exchanges. All of this solicits calling the customer care, initiating returns etc., at the same time, these steps hinge on content creation in the form of quality control where someone must scan the item and/or take a picture and attach it as an audit trail to the order before initiating a refund or communicating further to the customer. If 3D and AR enter this arena, many of these steps can be combined into one for a faster refund and a better experience.
The same applies for the Warehouse personnel who is liaising with multitude of interfaces with Call Center personnel waiting on customer to take a call on these exception scenarios. Warehouse personnel include, the team that is processing the returns, the put-away team that is checking the inventory back to the pool or the logistics team that is recording the reason for return/rejection/exchange.
Imagine a virtual world that is created on-demand when and all the parties involved are notified to join, they join and get into a conversation and resolve the issue. Sky is the limit for possibilities. These solutions exist as a simple SAAS offering that can render experiences seamlessly by wrapping around your content management system.
In essence, AR and VR will surely change the paradigm of retail for ever and retailers must make this a key part of their transformation strategy especially when the solutions are so easy and seamless.
Retailer: So Mr.Gee, do you mean now?
Mr.Gee: No Sir! I mean Yesterday.
