Metaverses & their irreversible changes on the worldwide business landscape

Metaverses are new virtual worlds quickly gaining traction with brands and customers.

What is enterprise metaverse?

An enterprise metaverse, by definition, is a metaverse that presents new business development opportunities for an enterprise. It refers to an immersive, interoperable, virtual space for companies to build up and boost their digital services and products. They offer new digital opportunities for enterprises to reach people around the world, raise engagement, create meaningful relationships, gain insights, automate routine tasks, and so much more.

Meta has been trying to imply that its metaverse is the future, despite being a rather late-comer to the scene. For instance, Sandbox is a virtual gaming world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences. Mona is a Web3 metaverse world-building platform that allows users to communicate with other users and create their own 3D spaces. More and more businesses want their own metaverse or 3D space to move their organizations, brands, and firms. Based on their goals, enterprises will likely be able to make metaverses work for them in the coming years.

What is the metaverse, exactly?

The metaverse is a separate digital world that merges with the physical world. In the metaverse, participants interact in social, economic, and almost any other sphere. The less hindered they are by physical barriers often determines the success of a virtual space.

Society is moving smoothly and naturally to live in an online-to-offline (O2O) format. The pandemic only accelerated this process. While alternative worlds are being created for work, play, and communication, the amount of time people are spending in them is growing.?

Metaverses are quickly becoming the next marketplace for buying and selling goods:

• Imagine that in addition to browsing for clothes and appliances, you can try them out without ever leaving the online space? People are buying virtual outfits for their avatars and merchandise that will be delivered by courier to their homes.
• How about the ability to shop with friends and consult with a vendor right in a game or in-person?
• Having a virtual company space where you can host meetings and reach out to new customers shouldn't be restricted to old-fashioned 2D spaces.

These new virtual spaces will also be places where salespeople can meet customers and where customers can get acquainted with products in a unique, gamified format.

Why do businesses need it?

While the world is wrestling with the emergence of metaverses, brands are actively exploring new digital channels introduced by the pandemic. Capturing market shares in the metaverse is now more urgent than ever.

Direct sales to reality (Direct-to-Consumer, D2C)

The customer journey begins in the virtual world and ends in the real world. By placing an order using an online app, the product is delivered to the end consumer. D2C allows brands to enter the market directly, without intermediaries.

But the process still depends on third parties for delivery. And handling becomes a "who gets to the front door faster" contest.

Not just advertising, but the presence of brands in virtual worlds

In addition to real products, people buy impressions. The world's biggest brands use game engines (the underlying software) to completely change and recreate spaces. Doing so allows them to present their spaces to audiences in new ways.

Examples:

• Louis Vuitton has developed skins for League of Legends in collaboration with Riot Games.
• The Gucci & Tennis Clash collaboration helps players discover exclusive outfits designed by the Italian fashion brand and purchase clothing items for the Tennis Clash character on the Gucci website.
• Balenciaga created a video game "Afterworld" to introduce their Fall 2021 collection. Players entered the post-apocalyptic world of 2031 to explore different areas — the Balenciaga store, a forest rave — where models either stood or danced wearing clothes from the new collection.

Balenciaga caught the attention of customers and retailers by providing them with an innovative way to experience the product using 3D avatars.

The metaverse is a way to go beyond the usual brick-and-mortar experience and turn a typical user scenario into the process of buying a product or service. There are already heavily-populated free-to-play open worlds with their own economies. People spend a lot of time in them, and as a result, spend a lot of money on their avatars. They purchase skins to give their avatars a unique appearance, which has become an entirely new field of sales for a new audience of customers.

If you remember the emergence of social networks, they eventually became an extension of our reality. Similarly, in a metaverse, ordinary life will be modified. Those with communication skills will be needed in a virtual environment to design the technology for interactions between people, including in the context of brand promotion. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to community managers to build trust.

New tools in education

The younger generation is proving that computer games are one of the most powerful forms of learning, developing creativity, and self-expression. By introducing metaverses into the educational process, costly overheads will disappear, and the comfort and quality of online education will improve.

In this way, the atmosphere and conditions of immersion in the learning materials can be designed around optimal conditions for the best possible academic outcomes. The modern development of virtual reality devices not only allows verbal or visual information but also an experience at the physiological level. After leaving the metaverse, students can use muscle memory from the exercises received during classes in the virtual world.

Three keys that will open doors to the metaverse for businesses and corporations

1. Metaverses linked to real systems/processes

Determine what integration points are needed to synchronize online and offline processes. Think POS systems, CRM systems, payment processing systems, etc.

The data gathered after an interactive 3D review can help inform your marketing and product development strategy. Perform an analysis of where consumers spent their time, what products they used most often, and what colors were most popular. These are just some of the insights that can be obtained from such integrations.

2. Ensure the real goods sold via the virtual world meet the customer's expectations.

It is essential to establish a trusted relationship with clients. They must understand that they are buying what they expect to get in real life using the metaverse. Digital look-alikes of your product, whether a car, a purse, or even a house, must be of high quality.

According to a report by the advertising agency Dentsu, “Product transparency and appeal to customers' emotions go hand in hand.” Emotions are the driving force behind influencing the purchase decision process.

3. Optimizing customer service inside and outside of the metaverse

For most brands, the first priority should be creating a true omnichannel or O2O (online 2 offline) experience that allows them to serve customers, however, whenever and wherever they want.

It's essential to strike a balance between automation and human interaction. Deciding which routine processes can be automated and which require a human approach can affect the customer experience.

The ability of technology to infer customers' emotional states and personal customer data, including idle time and purchase history, will increasingly be used to enable empathic interactions with brand representatives — humans, chatbots, and other channels.

We are witnessing the birth of a new world where people of all ages can not only play in publicly accessible virtual spaces, but also create, learn, and earn money. Our mission is to expand these opportunities.