Visual Interactive User Manuals for Consumer Products

AR and VR were considered futuristic technologies not so long back, but today have found their way into everyday reality and are used in various ways in industrial applications, production, and maintenance.

Futuristic businesses are harnessing the power of AR to influence customer experience and purchase journey. The AR-enabled 3D immersive and interactive experience with AR synchronizing virtual items into an external environment in real-time creates an enhanced Customer Experience (CX).

AR – An Invaluable Marketing Tool 

AR technology has enabled brands to offer customers an as close to a physical purchase experience. It has become a high-end marketing tool pre and post-sales. 

AR has ventured beyond the scope of just retail purchases. It is increasingly being used in product demonstrations, maintenance, and repair to enhance the overall customer experience and impact retail sales.

Many consumer durables and automotive companies have replaced boring instruction manuals with attractive, AR-enabled virtual manuals. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and gamification for customer engagement help in engaging and retaining its customers and increase the conversion rate.

Related Post: Revolutionizing Brand Promotion with Virtual Reality

AR Powered Manuals: An Immersive Product Life Cycle Guide

• Product at a Glance

The AR-enabled app will provide details on setting up the product and presents the product with its features.

It allows customers to get an overview of how to use the product even before installation.

• Product Overview and Understanding 

The Interactive User Manuals enable a product overview with key functionalities and allow for a more immersive introduction to the product of their choice.

• Resolving Set-up Issues:

Troubleshooting is not linear. An AR-powered IUM allows for proper diagnostics of the problem and the subsequent remedial actions. The AR manual is backed by highly advanced visualization graphics and an AI-enabled machine learning process. 

• Features of an IUM

An AR manual app delivers the experience by using augmented 3D models to identify objects and image matching technologies. 

The technical team will highlight different product components, the ability to grab and move items, rotate, zoom in, or out. 

All the information about the product, its process, and specifications are code scripted into the app. 

IUMs can improve business processes by gathering data, analytics and proving to be a useful evaluation tool.

IUMS should be scalable, offering cost efficiency and a quick development turnaround.

AI integrated deep learning AR IUMs offer the benefit of predicting specific sequences, thereby making them scalable and reducing development time and costs.

Benefits of an Interactive User Manual

Augmented reality remote assistance seamlessly bridges the physical and virtual worlds and assists the brand agents in helping customers more effectively, from installation to maintenance and repairs.

As the concept of Smart Homes grows with the increase of connected devices, AR remote assistance offers a solution that allows enterprises to scale up to support smart homes.

• Reduce operational costs

Do away with unnecessary logistics, pickups, and replacements while reducing call center complaints.

• Pre-Purchase Experience

Customers can experience the product before purchase and installation, minimizing returns.

• Customer Satisfaction

Create an enhanced UX and CX with the use of interactive remote assistance. Brands can also leverage this to upsell other products. 

• Reduce dependency

Customers need not depend on product experts for every minor issue, thereby enhancing productivity at both ends.

• Technician Support

Product Technicians can avail remote and visual guidance training and repair more effectively and at a faster rate.

Also read: Benefits of Augmented Reality in Business

Use Cases

Nespresso has an AR-based manual to explain the descaling process of their coffee machine by scanning the packaging. It offers a seamless and easy interactive explanation, offering an excellent CX.

Hyundai’s AR user manual throws up detailed AR overlays and video guides on in-car functions in addition to 45 other different parts of the car for repair and maintenance.

Huawei used AR to repair DC-to-AC solar power inverters and reported a decrease in the maintenance staff’s cognitive load and service time turnaround.

Conclusion

AR will be an $80B market by 2025, as per estimates by Goldman Sachs, and has the potential to be a megatrend technology. 

This implies a bright future for futuristic companies who seek to implement remote assistance AR.  

"AR is going to change everything."

-Tim Cook, CEO, Apple

KOMPANIONS'  Services for Consumer Durables

Brands today are aware that the key to creating a digitally transformed and futuristic consumer brand is to provide high-quality AR VR solutions for the consumer industry that enhance the life quality for consumers.

Through our innovations and out-of-the-box solutions, we at KOMPANIONS are unfolding the path for this transformation.