Imagine spending your day in the metaverse. In this scenario, you have your super-comfortable, lightweight VR headset on; you may have been holding your VR controllers all day; and you haven’t left your dedicated “metaverse room.” You spent the morning playing virtual pickleball with a friend, then traveled to your favorite virtual store to get a makeover for your avatar. You ended the day with a virtual book club meeting with some friends, then wrapped up by removing your headset, turning off your controllers, and heading to bed without having any in-person social interaction.

Is this the future we are working toward? No! The future of experiences is more than just the metaverse and is much more nuanced. My session at Forrester’s CX North America event, “The Future Of Experiences,” on June 7, will dive into what the future of digital experiences should look like and what you can do — right now — to kick-start these experiences.

How will experiences evolve over the next 10 years? At Forrester, we believe that future experiences will be simultaneously more immersive and more invisible. There are two parts of this experience evolution:

  1. The “on the glass” interface. This experience describes where humans interact with digital or internet experiences. In the future, these experiences will be more humanlike and immersive. Currently, consumers use GUI interfaces to do almost everything online. Increasingly, brands are offering conversational interfaces such as text-based chat and voice. In the future, a consumer could use AR/VR to visit a virtual shop to browse products with a store associate and buy both a digital version on the spot and a physical version that is shipped to their house.
  2. The “below the glass” engine. Today, user-initiated actions still drive experiences, but in the future, brands must anticipate and act on consumers’ needs. An intelligent engine that combines technologies such as data, AI, analytics, and more will power increasingly invisible experiences. For example, when a consumer checks in for their flight, they get a notification when the plane starts to board even if they aren’t yet at the airport. In the future, if they hadn’t made it to the airport in time for boarding, they would be booked on a new flight without having to do anything.

As you can see, you must get to work on enabling your future experiences. Forrester is building a body of content, tools, and insights to help you get the job done. Remember, this is a gradual evolution, and creating these invisible and immersive experiences will not instantly remove consumers from making phone calls, receiving direct mail, or using virtual assistants. These future experiences will be an additional experience for consumers that won’t fully replace the old ways of how we do things.

Learn More

To learn how you can jump-start your evolution to the future, join me at my CX North America session and walk away with:

  1. A better understanding of how experiences are simultaneously becoming more immersive and invisible.
  2. Examples of other companies that are successfully building their journey toward these types of experiences.
  3. An understanding of how to build these types of experiences for your customers.

With these three crucial takeaways under your belt, you will have the tools you need to be able to go back to your company and start your journey toward building the types of experiences that your consumers are looking for.

Register now for CX North America on June 7–9, 2022. Join virtually or in person in Nashville for three days of innovative programming on all aspects of customer experience.