13 ways augmented reality is affecting the customer experience

Augmented reality (AR) is offering the opportunity for marketing professionals to interact with their customers in a whole new way. It engages them and creates a completely new user experience that can enhance your product offering.

To understand how AR will affect the future of marketing and the customer experience going forward, we asked a panel of entrepreneurs from YEC the following question:

What’s one way augmented reality (AR) is playing an effective role in your marketing or customer experience initiatives?

Their best answers are below:

1. Keeping an eye on the future

While I have yet to apply AR to my business, I watch developments in the field with keen interest. Fashion is just one industry where AR is poised to have a huge impact. Retailers like Zara and H&M are moving quickly to integrate AR technology into their brick-and-mortar shopping experiences in a bid to lure younger customers offline and into their stores. This is only the beginning. – Karl Kangur, MRR Media

2. 3D mock-ups

AR is a great way to show an inexpensive mock-up to a client. We recently helped a client at a trade show who was selling custom cars. When you put on the AR goggles, you could choose the interior finishes, including colors, technology, upgrades, and it felt like you were really sitting inside the car! – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs

3. Better representation of KPIs

AR makes it easier for us to visually represent to clients what we’ll be measuring when taking over certain parts of their business process. It changes customer experience (and engagement) because even after we’ve explained what the client can realistically expect from working with us, there’s still a level of ambiguity. AR helps clear up any misconceptions even better than an animation could! – Cody McLain, SupportNinja

4. Keeping an eye on the competition

While we all know AR is going to play a big role in the future of both business and customer engagement, it’s still a big question of how. Right now, we are keeping a close eye on the competition to see not only what they are using, but also how their audience is accepting and using these methods, as well. This is both a valuable learning experience and a testing process for our business. – Zac Johnson, Blogging.org

5. Increased brand awareness

As a software development company, we’re always staying aware of new technology trends and how they impact consumers. When advising our clients, we’re looking at how AR can move our clients’ products towards their end goal. With AR, that typically involves saving time, improving the brand experience or making a sale. – Michael Fellows, Broadway Lab, Inc.

6. Added layers

Since we are focused on superfans and entertainment, we have leveraged AR as an added layer of immersion and interest for fans. Our customers view this as another option to layer on and choose from in our range of possibilities. Being able to combine it with other marketing and experience-related initiatives has only helped us amplify more traditional tactics. – Kim Kaupe, ZinePak

7. Efficient data center operations

We run several data centers and I’m particularly excited about the potential for augmented reality to increase operational efficiency and customer service. AR will be used to consolidate data from multiple sources and project server monitoring metrics, analytics and navigation data into the data center environment. That will be very useful for server administrators working on the data center floor. – Vik Patel, Future Hosting

8. Interactive product displays

19 Crimes wine is a great example of AR used effectively in product display marketing. With an app on your phone, you can look at the bottles and hear the criminals tell their stories. This is not only eye-catching for the customer, it also gets them excited about the product, which means they are more likely to buy and will definitely show it to others. – Andy Karuza, FenSens

9. Impressive presentations

When speaking to potential investors in a meeting or to potential customers on the floor of a trade show, I like to implement AR technology to provide a more memorable experience. Having a diagram or graphic leap off the screen makes a huge impact and can be the difference between starting a new business relationship and simply being forgotten after the presentation. – Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy

10. Banner ads in AR glasses

We’re looking down the road at how people will use the technology. I have my bets on AR glasses cannibalizing some of mobile’s usage. So while they’re not mainstream yet, I’m looking forward to using banner ads to advertise some of my businesses down the line. – Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

11. New options for strategy

AR opens up new options for strategy. Currently, retailers are going to be able to extract some of the biggest benefits and it’s important that they consider finding companies that will offer white label AR solutions. The more easily an AR experience can be branded and customized to a specific customer journey, the more likely it will succeed. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

12. Amazing potential for client tours

Like any business involved with architecture, I’m really looking forward to the ways that augmented reality will help us enhance the in-progress tours our clients expect. What we’re planning for is being able to highlight the things that our clients are looking at to automatically give them information, such as the type of material or the precise color. – Matt Doyle, Excel Builders

13. Revolutionizing shopping for clothes

Not knowing how something will fit and seeing how it looks on you are two of the final barriers of shopping online. Both of these are being solved with AR. With new data science companies matching different sizing data of various brands with someone’s body metrics, you’ll know exactly how something fits and see the outfit mapped on your body. – Fan Bi, Menswear Reviewed