New dimensions in sales thanks to extended reality

The trained eye recognizes that the topic of extended reality has long since arrived in the physical world. German companies are already showing considerable innovative strength in this area, but what has been developed in secret for years is only gradually coming to light.

Extended reality (XR) encompasses all technologies that make it possible to experience digital content as if it were part of the physical world. This includes immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) glasses, which give us access to the metaverse, a place where physical and digital interactions merge.

From a company perspective, XR offers great potential in the areas of marketing and sales. For example, it can solve certain logistical problems: sales representatives can bring the (personalized) product to the customer in all possible sizes and any possible configurations without limitations. Then there are trade fairs: Extended reality opens up completely new audiovisual possibilities for individual storytelling. Products are no longer just explained, but brought to life. When visitors of a trade fair booth put on VR glasses, they become more or less “trapped” in the experience. XR takes sales to a whole new level of interaction and immersion.

Virtual worlds are also changing the nature of social interaction and will therefore have a direct impact on sales processes. After all, what is sales if not an interaction between people?

The gaming platform Roblox comes close to what we imagine today when we think of the metaverse: a virtual world and a meeting place for a large number of people. Companies are taking advantage of the platform’s popularity: Ikea, for example, has opened a kind of virtual branch and is the first brand to offer paid work in Roblox. The Metaverse makes it easy to meet people from all over the world. This virtual form comes much closer to a meeting in physical reality than the current two-dimensional tools (namely: social media). There are already platforms in the B2B context, too, such as the Microsoft Teams extension Mesh, where employees can exchange ideas with the help of avatars and immersive 3D spaces. And at the completely virtual conference Immersive-X, my colleagues and I will soon be giving a presentation in the metaverse about the metaverse for financial service providers.

Lastly, immersion through XR technology offers companies completely new customer insights, since the glasses or headsets sit directly on the body and reveal body movements, viewing direction and interaction with a product. If this data can be collected safely and in accordance with data protection laws, it can be a real treasure for sales teams.

However, caution is of course required here, especially in the data-sensitive banking sector. One thing is clear: due to their greater ethical responsibility, financial institutions will never be able to handle customer data in the same way as the tech giants of this world, who are currently forging ahead in the field of extended reality. A recent case at the interface between XR, AI and data sensitivity: Two Harvard students have demonstrated how they can use the AI version of Meta’s AR glasses to spy on people. Such gray areas should not be ignored when considering the possibilities of extended reality.

As Commerzbank’s innovation unit, we at neosfer have of course been researching the possibilities of extended reality for the Group’s companies for years. I would like to present two current cases today.

One of our developments was just in use at Expo Real in Munich, one of the largest international trade fairs for real estate and investment, at the beginning of October: the pilot of Commerz Real’s hausInvest VR app.

We developed a virtual showcase for Commerz Real, the asset manager for real asset investments within the Commerzbank Group, for its real estate fund hausInvest. The pilot, which can be used with VR glasses, is intended to make an abstract product more tangible – for B2B sales staff in day-to-day business or at events and trade fairs such as Expo Real, where the project was enthusiastically received according Christopher Seipel, senior project manager at Commerz Real, with whom we implemented the app, among other things. Seipel continues: “At the latest on the virtual roof terrace of One Forty West – a dizzying 140 meters above Frankfurt am Main – dry real estate discussions became an unforgettable experience.”

Components of the hausInvest app include a showroom with information about the brand, a quiz to provide facts and various roof terraces that can be reached via a virtual elevator. Here you can get a 360-degree view of the surroundings and a deeper insight into some of the highlight buildings included in the fund, all of which are cityscape-defining properties in different parts of the world.

While the CommerzReal case is used in real sales, there is another use of extended reality, albeit internally: for neosfer’s IMPACT FESTIVAL which takes place in Frankfurt at the end of October, we have made the existing 3D plans virtually accessible.

Using an existing VR tool, the event team was able to finalize the planning and conception started in 2D. Design ideas, stand concepts, room layouts, routing elements, etc. can be tried out virtually: Is the font large enough, is the aisle wide enough, how does the stand layout work, what effect do special elements have? Where do we place the content on the LED wall so that it is easy to read from any position? “It’s difficult to imagine the atmosphere in an empty hall or based on a 2D plan, in VR you experience the atmosphere directly,” explains Rick Neu, the event manager responsible for the Impact Festival. “The tool was also extremely good for making quick decisions internally: ‘We’ll take a quick look at it in VR’.”

The event team was also able to visualize details in the virtual space for potential partners. “Everyone who put on the VR glasses and watched the festival tour was impressed, even if the level of detail in the design was not 100%. The virtual insight created anticipation of actually experiencing what we saw live,” says Rick.

Pilos or consultations based on XR are still often aimed at a very narrow target group. Although there are also browser-based projects, it is often not possible to participate in the experience without a special VR headset. In addition, the market penetration of VR devices is still very low. Opinions differ as to whether this will really change significantly in the next five years.

Nevertheless, tech giant Meta – Facebook didn’t rename itself for no reason – is one of the companies fully committed to a future in which extended reality will be a matter of course. In this quarter alone, transparent AR glasses such as the Snap Spectacles and, above all, the Meta Orion were unveiled, representing a clear step towards the vision of a metaverse integrated into our everyday lives, just as we use our smartphones everywhere today.

In this way, AI is also becoming much more integrated into our physical reality, as can be seen, for example, in this test of the Meta Ray-Ban. It will be exciting to see how this development affects human interaction – and therefore also strongly affects marketing and sales.