Augmented Reality (AR), this innovative technology that in recent years has received a great boost in development is now being used more and more to improve customer service and support. This technology, which allows for an interactive experience of a real-world environment where objects residing in the real world are enhanced by perceptual information, is revolutionizing customer service in many industries. Many businesses now, thanks to this technology, interact with consumers quickly and effectively. Let us look in detail at some of the different ways AR can be involved in customer service and how this affects businesses while guaranteeing them plenty of benefits. Real-time Maintenance & Repairing Instructions Thanks to the empowerment of remote assistance through AR technology, the interactions between customer service agents and clients have been drastically improved. Delays and misunderstandings have been significantly eliminated, thanks to AR-based Remote Support. Visual assistance allows agents to provide detailed maintenance and repair instructions for various products. In this way, through this remote support, clients are able to perceive the instructions given accurately, leading to quick maintenance and repairs of products they may have purchased. This reduces the time and costs it would take to ship a product to the repair centre or even bringing agents to the client's location. Since clients are offered support for maintenance and repairs even after the purchase, it provides at the same time positive feedback from them, improving a brand trust relationship and increasing its popularity in the market. Simplified Purchase Decisions AR, thanks to its ability to visualize various objects, is already close to buyers and helps them evaluate and examine a product before buying it. Through various AR-based applications, they have real-time access to the products they are interested in buying, and are able to get every necessary detail about them. Thanks to this technology, not only a high level of customer satisfaction is achieved, but at the same time, it avoids the numerous gatherings in the showrooms where the products are presented. Now the traditional way of presenting products is replaced by this new virtual way. All this, despite the fact that it facilitates buyers' decision-making to buy different products, saves them extra time and cost to visit the showrooms. Training Customer Service Agents In any type of business customer service remains a key link in the smooth running of processes that are mainly related to the transfer of products and services to the buyer. Moreover, the process of providing a service to customers is even more important after the purchase of a certain product, in the case of complaints, defects or even repairs. All of this brings us to the fact that customer service agents need to be well-trained to provide the right and accurate service. Already thanks to AR technology that empowers remote assistance experts train their agents making them achieve a satisfactory level of expertise. Through AR Remote Assistance groups of agents are trained simultaneously by presenting themselves with different products in a virtual way. In the future, they will be able to recognize these products and provide solutions in case of possible complications that may occur. Even through the 3D models of the products, the agents are able to convey all the knowledge effectively without the need for different papers and guides. In this way, companies are able to train agents located around the globe at the same time, eliminating the many extra costs that traditional training may have required. Self Service Support We can consider it a radical change to also provide assistance to customers in the form of AR-based self-service. The peculiarity of this is that already in this way the customer service agents can be totally replaced. All this is possible by using an AR-based app, and in this way, customers can have real-time access to various information related to the product, including FAQs, and materials that can provide solutions to various problems and questions. This type of AR-based self-service support makes it possible to reduce the time spent responding to customer requests and lower the cost of paying multiple customer service agents. In this way, the satisfaction of the clients increases significantly by finding in real-time the answers to their problems. To conclude, nowadays when the interaction between businesses and clients has great importance, this technology shows its role by bringing radical changes in the way this communication is realized. Numerous businesses have adopted AR in their pre-sale, point-of-sale, and after-sales support operations. This technology is a great solution to offer customers real-time support but also an unforgettable experience. As mentioned above, the impact of this technology has affected every business operating in different fields, and there are many premises for further development in the coming years, which is one of the reasons that the adoption of this technology is strongly recommended.
