How to Use Augmented Reality to Attract More Customers

Augmented Reality has already been implemented in various spheres. The main reason for that is customer experience. Forward-thinking companies are using AR to enhance customer experience and ensure more delightful interactions with customers.

These companies integrate the latest customer experience techniques and Augmented Reality to improve a product or service they offer. This article will cover a few examples of how companies can successfully use AR to improve the customer journey and attract new customers.

How AR Improves Customer Experience

AR can help organizations to improve the way they communicate with clients, both online and offline. AR provides the chance to incorporate content into a buyer’s view of the world.

The examples below demonstrate how AR can improve customer experience. They include Augmented Reality app development that you can use to increase sales and add value to your business. Of course, these are not the only examples of using AR, but they embody the key strategies applied by businesses.

1. Training Customer Service Team

Human interaction is the most important part of customer service. When browsing goods or making purchases customers want to talk to a real person. This makes the training of your customer relations specialists important.

For enterprises that have many physical products, AR can provide customer service specialists a way to “see” a product without the need to locate a real product. The only way staff can reach that level of expertise is through hands-on experience.

AR can provide that experience without a staff member having to physically try every item. For instance, AR models can replicate a real product, and customer service staff can see the different versions of the product (different colors, accessories, etc.) and, most importantly, understand how different they are. This way, they will be able to expertly explain each item to potential customers.

2. Enhancing Decision Making

The e-commerce market is growing year by year. Nevertheless, online shopping has a significant drawback: buyers can’t physically assess a product before purchasing it, and return rates for products bought online are much higher than for brick-and-mortar stores.

AR can effectively address this problem. Interactive apps that rely on augmented reality can offer customers a better-rounded experience of a product. For example, there are apps that let users virtually place furniture in their home and see whether they match their interior.

Augmented Reality helps to enhance customer experience at both ends of the buyer’s journey. By showing buyers how the product will influence their everyday lives, it removes friction before purchase, and, by having a better idea of a product, clients will be less likely to return it later.

3. Offering Advice or Adding Value Via Interactive Packaging

The impact of AR on customer experience isn’t limited to the pre-sale stages. One of the best examples of using augmented reality during the sales stage is the concept of interactive packaging.

Interactive packaging gives buyers a more engaging experience. When built upon the right framework, it allows customers to interact with your product, adding that extra value.

Intelligent packaging entails a functional design that goes beyond the mere packaging task, providing an extra advantage. In essence, the intelligence of packaging stems from its ability to communicate with the customer and provide value in the form of information, automation, or personalization.

Augmented reality rightly takes a leading role among all the possible means of achieving this functionality. With a digital layer, it complements the physical package, which can be explored with the aid of your smartphone camera.

4. Try-Before-You-Buy Experience

With virtual ‘try-before-you-buy’ experiences ranging from previewing furniture in your home to virtually trying on luxury fashion clothes, AR applications have been on the rise. Once a nice-to-have feature,  AR has rapidly become an important technology for merchants.

According to a Neilsen global survey, customers listed Augmented and Virtual Reality as the top technologies they want to assist them in their daily lives. In fact, 51% of respondents said they were willing to test products using this technology. Since then, it is expected that interest will keep growing as we have seen AR shift from being gimmicky sometimes to solving real problems for clients, particularly in the midst of the pandemic. According to a new report released by Shopify, interactions with products having 3D/AR content showed a 94% higher conversion rate than for products without AR/3D.

5. Self-Service Support

AR can allow buyers to avoid customer service staff altogether. Many organizations use AR for self-service support at the post-purchase stage. Customers can use AR apps to get an in-depth self-service overlay.

The overlay puts resources at the fingertips of the client, such as FAQ pages and support sheets where they can find answers to popular questions and thus save time and free up your customer support team. Companies will see fewer questions from buyers and customer loyalty will be higher as clients can independently resolv