How the GenAI-Metaverse Relationship Impacts CRM

In my most recent CRM magazine column, I shared the story of the red “fire dress” to illustrate the ongoing integration between CRM, artificial intelligence, and the metaverse. I told the story of an avid Gen Z metaverse shopper who is looking for a special dress to wear to an upcoming virtual party. She puts on her Apple Vision Pro goggles and visits GetReal!—her favorite dress shop in the metaverse. She meets with the store manager avatar to describe the type of party dress she is looking for.

While she speaks to the store manager avatar, the store’s natural language processing engine feeds her dress description into the store’s genAI engine. Her metaverse shopping history—along with her “digital closet,” stored in the store’s CRM system—provides additional data that gets fed into the genAI engine.

Two hours later, she receives a ping on her Apple Vision Pro goggles asking her to visit GetReal! to view the ideal party dresses the genAI engine has located. While the engine finds 11 incredible dresses, it turns out her favorite is a red fire dress that has actual flames coming out of the bottom of the dress—in the metaverse, after all, you can design garments out of impractical or even impossible fabrics like liquid gold, glass, water, fire, or smoke. She is thrilled with the fire dress and purchases it as an NFT (non-fungible token), which further cements the dress’ status as a unique fashion piece. She wears the fire dress to the metaverse party and it’s a hit.

While this story illustrates a fun way to understand the integration between CRM, AI, and the metaverse, at the core of this integration is the tight and growing genAI-metaverse symbiotic relationship and its impact on sales, marketing, and customer service excellence. Let’s dig into this relationship.

THE METAVERSE NEEDS GENERATIVE AI (AND VICE VERSA)

Gen Z (the generation born between roughly 1997 and 2012) and Millennials (who were born between 1981 and 1996) are driving AI and the metaverse. These generations are as comfortable in the virtual world as they are in the real world; in fact—as seen in the movie Ready Player One—Gen Z and Millennials thoroughly enjoy moving seamlessly from one world to the other. They decide when to learn, work, play, and shop in each world. Consequently, the more realistic we make the immersive world, the more Gen Z and Millennials are likely to spend time in the metaverse purchasing goods and services, seeking customer service, and performing other CRM functions.

Recent advances in genAI—built on top of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing algorithms—produce the metaverse experiences Gen Z and Millennials thrive in:

• Producing photo-realistic avatars that move around the metaverse with the agility of a human.
• Generating photo-real objects that stimulate the user experience: Peek at the latest Ferrari in the metaverse; you will swear it is real!
• Scraping, organizing, and querying vast amounts of data generated inside (and outside) the metaverse to deliver personalized answers/recommendations quickly and to tailor metaverse interactions based on user behavior.
• Delivering easy-to-create, personalized, and highly contextualized immersive environments that respond to a user’s emotional state.
• Democratizing content creation: For example, our shopper was thrilled to learn the creator of the red fire dress was an up-and-coming designer.

While genAI performs its magic in the metaverse, the metaverse captures valuable data that gets fed into genAI engines (e.g., the natural language conversation that the shopper had with GetReal!’s store manager), thereby enabling the genAI engines to perform even better magic and perpetuating the genAI/metaverse symbiotic relationship.

TOGETHER, AI AND THE METAVERSE IMPACT CRM

The genAI-metaverse relationship meaningfully impacts sales, marketing, and service in the real and virtual worlds:

• Sales:The genAI-metaverse union can encourage buyers to view products in a 3-D immersive environment; deliver optimal product and service recommendations; provide guided selling; close deals faster; send targeted messages that draw upon CRM contact history; leverage sales intelligence, and more.
• Marketing:The two technologies can create hyper-personalized campaigns tailored to specific individuals; generate customer segments dynamically; provide impactful marketing content; provide gamification to enhance the immersive user experience, and more.
• Customer service:GenAI and the metaverse can provide fully automated, AI-driven service experiences; leverage smart, customer service chatbots; build powerful customer service knowledge bases both to assist customer service reps and provide cost-effective, customer self-service; build and leverage Metaverse customer communities, and more.
• Field service:Finally, the two technologies can provide real-time remote assistance; resolve field inquiries more quickly and accurately; generate creative solutions to challenging problems; leverage digital twin technology; deliver cost-effective self-service to the field; leverage metaverse field service communities, and more.

Whether you’re offering new shopping experiences, connecting with new audiences in hyper-personalized ways, or solving a complex field service issue, now is the time to understand and leverage the genAI-metaverse symbiotic relationship and its impact on CRM. 

Barton Goldenberg (bgoldenberg@ismguide.com) is president of ISM, Inc. Since 1985, ISM has established itself as a premier strategic adviser leveraging leading edge technologies—like the metaverse and digital communities—to improve sales, marketing, and customer service. His thought leadership includes co-creating the ‘Business Success in a Virtual World’ podcast, co-creating the award winning XR/Metaverse Resource Center, and writing three business books, including The Definitive Guide to Social CRM. He is also in high demand as a keynote speaker (www.bartongoldenberg.com).

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