In 2010, I was associated with a Boston-based startup named LocationFabric that had an app called ‘Bubbl app’. The app would let you take pictures with celebrities or brands or events at a specific location. Using augmented reality (AR), we would place ‘virtual Bubbls’ at specific locations. By just pointing their camera, users could choose those virtual bubbles available at that location to take pictures and auto-fill all the details about a place or event. But the only limitation was it was all static back then. I remember we talking about how cool it would be if we could enable virtual interactions through Bubbls. Well, maybe our thoughts were ahead of the times.
Today, however, the Metaverse is inching towards a reality where real people in their digital avatars interact in a virtual world. It’s a combination of 3D, AR, VR, AI, Voice tech, and immersive tech that aims to create a realistic experience in the virtual world.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media, and/or entertainment.
We don’t know how the overall technology stack will evolve for Metaverse, but it will surely disrupt business models for various industries. Just like computers, the internet, and smartphones changed the rules of the business; Metaverse shows equal if not more potential.
Industries and use cases that will show early adoption:
- Customer support for banking, healthcare, travel, telecom, e-commerce, and the public sector
- Training and education with a more immersive learning experience would be possible
- The gaming & entertainment industry will see a huge opportunity in Metaverse
- Even social services, NGOs, and public sectors may find new ways to engage and serve people
Today, our world is quite simplified yet complex in that we can perform a lot of activities online through our web or mobile devices and also meet people in the physical world to do business or socialize with them. Metaverse presents a hybrid environment where users will interact with digital avatars, 3D digital objects, and digital processes. Today’s intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) will be seen in 3D digital avatars. Brands may introduce these digital avatars to help their customers and employees with, say, online shopping, answering their questions, or guiding them through a process as a support agent.
Although chatbots and virtual agents are not new to us, the biggest shift we will see in the metaverse is that these IVAs would transform into digital avatars with a body, face, and personality and be able to understand and engage through aspects like facial expressions, gestures, body language, and emotions, in addition to text and voice-based conversational capabilities.
For fulfilling such functions, a seamless conversation between the two or more entities is essential. This is where brands would need technologies with superior conversational AI or natural language understanding capabilities to understand the intent and to carry on conversations that are contextual, relevant, and personalized. The more human-like these conversations are, the better the interactions experience people will have and the more they want to stay in the environment.
“As long as there’s a virtual service provider of some sort, conversational AI is the basis of that avatar for its very existence and to be functional. If avatars are the basis of the Metaverse, then conversational AI is its engine”, says Raj Koneru, CEO and Founder of Kore.ai.
Regardless of the functionality of these digital avatars, the experience will be key, and hence voice technology will be more important than text. People would prefer talking to these avatars over chatting with them, and brands will have to ensure these experiences feel natural and frictionless. To fulfill this, brands will have to invest in advanced conversational AI technology with multilingual real-time translation capabilities, contextual awareness, and sentiment management.
In a nutshell
The Metaverse is at a very early stage, but if it is the next big thing as we believe it to be, it will have the potential to change the way we interact and do business. Soon we will start seeing interesting ways companies will start utilizing this new environment in a wide range of use cases for customer experience and employee engagement and more. And although the Metaverse platform may be a new one, its success will depend on the basic thing – how good the overall experience is. One thing is for sure; conversational AI will play a pivotal role in creating and delivering that experience.
Authored by
Abhijit Mhetre, SVP Marketing, Kore.ai, a Conversational AI Platform. He is responsible for strategizing and leading ‘all things marketing’ from India. He is a specialized B2B techno-marketer who loves building global challenger brands.
