Part of the telco’s digital-first approach to improve customer experience
KPN has become the latest telco to open a virtual store to offer business and consumer solutions to customers. Rather than a wider metaverse play, KPN says it wants to experiment with developing customer experience and work out what technologies work best for delivering that.
“While our app and web shop are more focused on direct transactions, the (virtual) store is also about experience,” said KPN Retail VP Martin Boers. “The virtual store fits in with KPN’s digital-first approach, in which experience plays an increasingly important role.”
He added: “The goal is to discover how the latest technologies such as Virtual and Augmented Reality can best be applied in contact with our customers and what impact they have on the customer experience.”
Via a screen or with VR glasses, visitors get the same experience as in the store, but from home. In the virtual store customers can walk around virtually, viewing the latest devices with augmented reality while virtual KPN employees stand ready to advise consumers and business customers.
The virtual store looks the same as the existing stores and the recently opened experience stores in Eindhoven and Amsterdam. “This creates a sense of recognition for customers and, conversely, the virtual store also offers opportunities to introduce a new shopping experience that can later also be adopted in the physical stores. This blurs the boundaries of the physical and digital world,” said Boers.
He added: “By listening to customer feedback, KPN will continue to improve and provide innovative solutions that take the digital experience to the next level.”
Early virtual steps for telcos
While many telcos have embraced metaverse strategies to engage customers in new ways – and sell more services – the relative lack of edge infrastructure has not encouraged widespread adoption of immersive devices, coupled with the bulkiness which is needed to support processing.
However, telcos understand that immersive technologies can broaden their sales channels and potentially improve how customers interact with them during sales and support. For example, unlike the physical stores, the KPN virtual store is not limited in opening hours.
Even when they are open, stores are not necessarily favoured by customers. Analyst firm CCS Insight’s recent consumer sentiment study showed that only 15% of mobile phone owners in the UK said they plan to visit a phone shop in the next six months.
Telcos can use the digital shopping experience to improve their own metaverse offering or go further like SK Telecom which has added an “if home” feature to its metaverse platform ‘ifland’ which many different brands including 7-Eleven are planning to use as a 3D virtual store to launch various promotional events.
In September last year Orange Spain opened a metaverse store where it exhibits products from brands like OPPO, Honor, Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi or Google. Ooredoo in Qatar has had its virtual store operational since 2019.
Some telcos are opting for gaming as a channel to customers in the metaverse. For example, EE recently used Fortnite Creative 2.0 leveraging Unreal Engine 5 to build its new Game Store in Fortnite.
Boers said the KPN virtual store offers the familiar shopping experience in a digital way, adding that the store will be further designed and optimised based on customer feedback.
Pictured: KPN executive board members Marieke Snoep and Chantal Vergouw were the first to visit the virtual store with VR glasses, under the watchful eye of Martin Boers (Retail).