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Over the last several decades, our lives have become increasingly digitized thanks to the increased availability of the internet and smart devices. And new technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and so on, are set to further disrupt our lives. In fact, they’re already doing so in a wide number of ways.
Virtual reality, for instance, has the potential to reshape society in any way imaginable, in everything from how we spend our downtime to how we are trained for a new job. Many businesses are already taking advantage of this technology, among other technologies, to improve business operations and customer satisfaction. Below are a few ways that businesses are using VR.
Hiring and Training
VR is useful when hiring potential employees and training employees for various positions. When hiring, businesses can use VR headsets to help simulate certain scenarios for candidates to see how they perform. This can help businesses to see if a candidate is a good fit for a position in a way that other tests can’t. Plus, it’s a more efficient way to test candidates because it’s less disruptive to business operations.
This is perhaps even truer for training employees because normal operations are always disrupted when a new employee is brought on. With VR, employees won’t need to take time out of their normal schedule to train someone new — a VR headset can do that. VR can also allow employees to experience situations that are difficult or even impossible to replicate. For example, it is extremely useful in training surgeons, astronauts, and engineers.
Meetings and Conferences
Instead of traveling nationally or internationally for a meeting or an important conference, many businesses are starting to hold virtual meetings and conferences. This is cheaper and more accessible for many businesses, and it offers a more fun, tech-forward way to mix up meetings and conferences. To really go the extra mile, meetings could be held in a virtual venue that mimics a real-life venue, or they could even be held on a far-off planet. In the virtual realm, anything’s possible.
Home and Vacation Tours
Many real estate businesses have been using “virtual” tours for a while now to allow prospective clients to tour homes. But VR takes it a step further by offering a better way for clients to tour a home without having to travel to that home. They could experience what it’s like to live there, even add in furniture and decorate it virtually to see what it would really be like without having to purchase it. At the moment, this is most commonly used in luxury real estate deals, but in the future, it might become more commonplace.
Tourist agencies, hotels, and resorts are also offering virtual tour opportunities so that clients can get a much better idea of what their visit would be like before booking or traveling. It’s also a more effective way to sell what they’re offering.
Product Demonstrations
Another great application of VR for businesses is in the product demonstration. VR can be used to market and test products on both clients and customers before a product even goes into production. It allows them to get a better idea of what the product actually is and how it works without a business having to spend money on a physical prototype.
The number of products that could be tested is seemingly endless. New clothing styles could be tested in the virtual world, allowing customers to try out new fashions in a virtual dressing room. Customers could try out new cars without having to set foot in a dealership, and they could even drive them in exotic locations that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Customers could test new toys, gadgets, or crazy inventions.
There are a number of ways businesses are already taking advantage of all that VR offers. As we head into the next decade, we’ll likely see this as a more common way to conduct business and sell to clients.
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