Have you ever found yourself watching a film from the 1960s and laughing at how far off the mark they were about how life was going to be in the year 2000? As with most new innovations, there’s lots of speculation around what the metaverse is, and with it forecasted to become a $800 million market by 2024, its likely to be something we will all become more familiar with over the coming years.

What is the metaverse?
If you don’t know, then that’s fine, even tech experts are still unclear what it’s evolution could look like. At a basic level, it’s essentially a shared virtual space that’s immersive, interactive and hyper-realistic. If you think back to the development of communication over the internet, it started as primarily text based (emails, messages, etc), before moving to more media focused (photos, videos, streams), the next logical step is an immersive 3D world.
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CX uses in the metaverse
A lot of the current interactions are very tech focused, such as feedback and bug reporting. But looking into the future more, it will support onboarding and training of CX agents instead of zoom calls, help remote workers (or to further extend your remote working workforce), act as an alternative channel for customers to contact you through instead of live chat or calling. For instance, customers could have a virtual face to face meeting with a mortgage advisor, or book that holiday in a virtual travel agency which allows them to walk around the hotel they’re interested in.
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There’s always challenges
The challenges we can foresee would be very similar to those you’re already familiar with. You want to ensure you’re giving top notch customer service whilst complying with any relevant regulations. You can still expect your customers to continue to want a seamless experience, but this new channel will give you another arena in which to wow your customers with your differentiated services. More familiar technologies like interaction analytics will still serve a purpose, but this may expand to cover items like body language if you’re able to metaphysically interact with your customers.
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Should you rush to set a metaverse strategy?
As you’ve probably gathered, the future of the metaverse is something that’s very unclear right now. Early adopters will help to define the future of it, but they will also invest heavily for the privilege. Traditional ROI, at present, is hard to calculate as the initial investment is considerably higher than in other channels, with unclear returns. But these early adopters gain vital experience in how best to operate in this arena. As with any other new investment opportunity, the risk is elevated, but so are the returns.

What is clear, is that there’s a lot of potential on the horizon, so it’s more a case of when, and not if, you should think of a strategy. Right now, very few service organisations are investing in the metaverse but a few are keeping a watchful eye on how this is developing, so for now, we think sitting back, watching, and learning is the wisest move you could make.
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Get in touch

Lee Mostari
Director of Insight and Analytics
E. lee.mostari@davies-group.com
L. https://www.linkedin.com/in/leemostari/