The rapid and recent trend of digital transformation has forever changed the world as we know it, creating digital havens driven by technology in almost every sector and corner of the globe. The beginning of the digital age has also shifted business priorities radically. Now, in today’s highly digital world, it’s more important than ever for businesses to create digital experiences that provide value not only to their consumers, but their employees, and even workers in other industries as well.

For consumers, the digital experience can directly affect how they feel about a brand, and where they decide to spend their money. For workers, it can be tied to maximizing productivity and efficiency, as well as training, allowing employees to use all tools at their disposal. For other industries, digital experiences could offer invaluable data for site work, without the worker ever leaving the building.

However, regardless of the sector, the bottom line when it comes to digital experiences’ is being able to deliver an immersive, realistic experience. Technological advancements have allowed companies to offer these immersive experiences, with the most notable being used by enterprises at the moment being augmented reality (AR) technology.

AR is an enhanced version of the real physical world that is achieved through the use of digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli and delivered via technology. Amid the rise of data collection and analysis, one of augmented reality’s primary goals is to highlight specific features of the physical world, increase understanding of those features, and derive smart and accessible insight that can be applied to real-world applications.

AR is increasingly becoming the option among enterprises looking to enhance their digital experiences. For the customer experience (CX), AR allows organizations to bring the store to the customer, offering them the chance to shop and test products from their own home. As for employees of all fields, AR can produce unprecedented amounts of data, providing real-time analytics, and immersive training capabilities.

With an array of advantages to provide, AR has become one of the fastest growing technologies around the globe. As of 2022, there are roughly 1.1 billion AR devices worldwide, with the market value coming in at $38.65 billion. Experts predict that, in terms of sheer numbers, there will be 1.7 billion AR devices worldwide by 2024. As for the market value, experts estimate the AR industry will grow at a CAGR of 40.9 percent, bringing the market value to $597.54 billion by 2030.

The growth comes as no surprise. Thanks to the plethora of advantages the technology can provide, enterprises today are increasingly looking for ways to add AR capabilities to their repertoire.

Recently, CareAR, a Xerox company and service experience management (SXM) market leader, announced the availability of CareAR Experience Builder, a new visual augmented reality and AI-based design tool that enables anyone to create self-guided instructional experiences at scale.

With a no-code, drag-and-drop interface, organizations can now rapidly design and deploy intelligent and immersive self-guided instructional experiences for field technicians, employees, or customers viewed on standard mobile devices or wearables. Everyone is instantly empowered anytime with expertise and “know-how” to perform heightened functions and independently complete tickets and tasks faster.

“It’s truly exciting to witness the tangible results that our customers substantially reported while easily creating and consuming self-guided instructional experiences utilizing CareAR Instruct and Experience Builder.” said Sam Waicberg, Co-founder and President of CareAR. “The service experience is ripe for transformation. Service workers and customers deal with massive amounts of static paper and pdf-based content. The flexibility to generate new or modify existing instructional flows in a matter of minutes, and automatically make those updates available is nothing short of revolutionary.”

Self-service instructional experiences can seamlessly be added to level-up any service management workflow, product offering or asset ranging across industries and B2B or B2C use cases, from maintenance, inspection, and repair to manuals, unboxing, set-up guides, tutorials, and frequent how-to’s.

Through a digital and visual design, instructional experiences are extremely intuitive, and incorporate 2D content such as video along with CareAR’s patented 3D augmented reality, digital twin visualization, and AI computer vision for visual verification of steps or task completion, ensuring high levels of productivity, accuracy, and consistency.

“We are continuously seeking new ways of thinking and working collaboratively with our partners as a catalyst for change. If we can rethink the systems and technologies underpinning some of our processes, then we remove costs and improve outputs for our customers,” said Ralph Powell, Business Development Director, Sapphire Utility Services.

“Building immersive experiences in CareAR’s Experience Builder enables our operatives to have real-time access to the most accurate information, responding to incidents with the expertise needed to resolve issues right the first time. The results are improved safety and compliance, faster and more cost-effective resolutions, and improved customer experiences – which we can continuously refine and improve.”

CareAR’s Experience Builder can also help boost employees’ skills through training, or help subsidize a lack of experience through real-time analytics and other generated data. This comes at just the right time, as the current talent shortage is a challenge as 40 percent of companies say that they lose specialized knowledge and expertise faster than they can gain it.

“For many of our customers, it’s not practical or cost-effective to come to the data center for IT management and maintenance tasks,” said Thomas Cannady, Cyxtera’s Vice President of Network Services. “Our Remote Hands with Visual Assist support – which leverages CareAR Instruct and Experience Builder – allows our customers to participate in live sessions with our technicians, seeing what they see through smart glasses in real-time or through a self-guided instructional experience. CareAR helps us to empower our customers to get more involved and to get more resolved, in their support experience via intelligent and interactive content.”

Both CareAR Instruct and Experience Builder offer an interactive and memorable service experience that better connects customers and employees, while optimizing the way enterprises operate. Employees become more engaged when learning and employing a new technology, and customers receive improved service and support that is efficient and effective.

“Augmented Reality use cases are rapidly expanding due to value being realized in worker enablement and immersive engagement,” said Eric Abbruzzese, Research Director at ABI Research. “A solution like the CareAR SXM platform helps organizations realize that value at scale, with key capabilities like no-code step-by-step guidance creation through Experience Builder quickening time to value.”