XR Human - An Intelligent Employee Every Business Needs

This article studies the Extended Reality (XR) Human, a 3D virtual avatar capable of interacting in real-time in a 3D environment. It exemplifies the application in a corporate and business environment in various departments such as training and quality, customer services, and human resource. The study describes the attributes of an XR Human, which involves computer vision, and natural language processing. The study develops further into two elements of an XR human, "exhibit emotion" and "understand sentiment" that makes them act like a human. The project provides the real-life application of an XR human in a business for anyone interested in researching or using Immersive technology.

Introduction

White-collar jobs are becoming easily replaceable as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting more accurate. The replacement of blue-collared jobs through automation of defined processes has been going on for centuries. White-collar jobs were still considered irreplaceable in work that involved the usage of the brain and logic as well as emotions and expression. With the advancement in AI in the areas of computer vision to detect human emotions, natural language processing on voice and text, which involves accurately communicating with humans and understanding their language, accent, and sentiments. Together with the increase in processing power using GPU XR humans act in real-time. But the foremost recent development in AI through Immersive technology because of the 3D environment such as Metaverse and developing Avatars capable of exhibiting emotions such as "empathy" and facial expression like "smile" and closely resembling human has helped in providing a face to the AI through XR-Human. XR Humans can provide step-by-step instruction as a subject matter expert (SME) to the trainee, communicate with a customer in the customer-service industry to troubleshoot and resolve a query, provide product demonstration, and help the customer with the features and benefits of a product. The application of XR humans is extended in the People Solutions department as well as conducting meetings during the hiring process and during the onboarding of new employees by acting as a hiring manager. Application of XR Human is growing swiftly in the corporate sector due to their 24X7 availability and capability to reach remote locations with the internet on Omni-channels such as mobile phones. With the tremendous growth in the market, there is a challenging road ahead of us to ensure technology is fully matured for production deployment and work without human supervision.

Objective

Understand interoperability of Immersive capabilities such as XR Human to enrich customer experience and employee satisfaction (ESAT) in various departments. Introduce the diverse characteristics of XR Human technology, line-of-businesses where XR humans are functional, benefits it has been providing, challenges in the roll-out of the technology, and advancement in compliance and regulations to ensure new guidelines are acceptable and can be easily implemented.

Background

The traditional functional, geo-based, and product/services siloed design is impossible to operationalise around “the customer”. A failure to change customer engagement to match evolution has undermined the goal of reaching customers at moments that influence their purchases. The only way to stay ahead and differentiate from traditional and new competitors is by delivering a consistent customer experience. Customers today employ multiple contact channels and are tech-savvy, socially networked, and demand instant resolution of their problems — anytime and across many channels. Customers from distant geographies and segments with varied preferences on how they interact with businesses add to the complexity. Another challenge for companies is to reach out to customers through the channels they choose the language they communicate and be available at the time they select. The use of XR humans, driven by conversational AI, assists in providing personalized, emotionally resonant, and scalable customer experience to bring significant shifts in current-day digital learning environments. The intent is to create 3D representations of advisors, businesses, and products, so hyper-realistic and tactile that style them indiscernible from the real, and then to intermediate any range of services. These avatars use text, voice, video, imagery, and interaction to make interactions more engaging. An XR human can rely on a single cloud function for multiple query handling from several callers to allow efficient and fast query resolution. XR humans can manifest an agent's personality, voice, and accent and show support to customers through their tone, actions, and body language. XR human avatars can converse with customers through text or speech to provide resolution. Also, XR humans can respond to customer queries much faster than live human agents and are considered quite beneficial in situations where it becomes humanly impossible to manage the inflow of many queries to be resolved by a specific number of live human agents. A virtual AI avatar programmed with a large volume of data and trained to develop an algorithm and process allows for producing desirable business results such as the resolution of any query that a customer might have. There is an increase in the number of contact centers employing XR humans as the cost and time to hire a customer care executive to handle customer queries is increasing, which is also due to the increase in the attrition in the contact center industry in the recent period wherein the recurring cost of training the agents is an operational overhead. XR humans are either interactive or non-interactive in nature. While the Noninteractive XR human has found their use for showcasing a product and its features to the customer or reading through a product catalogue, terms, and conditions, or providing training to the new hires, in which there is no interaction with audiences or trainees. The interactive XR humans are programmed to understand and learn customer behavior in real-time and based on customer inputs, rapidly adapt to create a completely personalized approach to each customer. Live human agents who are trained to resolve a standard set of queries are more likely to face challenges forming an interactive environment in terms of a personalized approach in comparison to XR humans.

How Does XR Human Work

When a particular user logs in for a purchase, these XR humans recognize the user’s emotion, what/where the user wanted, and therefore guide the user to making purchasing a convenient experience. XR Human applications combine the following components:

1. Hardware devices work as displays (Head-mounted displays, smartphone screens, smart eyeglass) and input sources (sensors, camera, microphone, gyroscope). There is an increase 6 in wearables designed to provide hardware and software for faster processing and sensor requirements. Software programs that transform and create data into 3D images.
2. The prominent software includes Unreal Engine Metahuman, Unity 3D, Adobe Illustrator, and AutoCAD to detail a 3D avatar. Software development frameworks help in the integration of the virtual content and the real world through the device camera.
3. SDK like Vuforia, ARKit, and ARCore – were introduced by Apple and Google. They require a platform such as Unity or Unreal Engine to develop the Digital experience.
4. Algorithms and conversational-AI APIs such as Google Speech to Text API, and Amazon Lex Speech and Text API, IBM Watson are used to enable language processing and dialogue between XR humans and customers. It includes detecting the language, accent, and sentiment during the conversation and responding based on the decision.
5. Environmental understanding uses computer vision APIs to identify facial expressions, and ambiance to place XR humans in the desired environment. It also includes Light detection, to assess the surrounding and light virtual models under the same conditions. Image recognition, to identify assets, places, people, texts, and actions in images.
6. SaaS Platforms such as Uneeq, Soul Machines, and InWorld AI provide ready-to-use and integration Software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms with pre-build 3D avatars, and language processing capabilities allowing businesses to deploy the services quickly. 

Application Of XR Human

XR Human provides advantages of training solutions before the customer service agent moves to the production floor while making the training environments more experiential and memorable.

• An XR teacher that appears and behaves like a human being is available 24/7 and converses with the trainee in the language of their choice. The training adheres to real scenarios wherein the XR Human trainer simulates a call as a customer and assesses the response of the trainee to provide guidance.
• XR Human help the visitors to navigate through a product catalogue and simulate an agent by starting a conversation with the guests in any known or programmed languages and subsequently understand their preferences via their replies based on a prebuilt algorithm, to provide suitable responses to customers’ queries.
• XR Human People solutions manager help caters to onboarding support to the employees by helping them with the HR policy documents such as leaves and guide by providing a virtual campus tour of the premise in which the candidate joined.
• XR Human customer care executives help resolve customer queries by conversing with the caller in their language and preferences.
• The virtual executive responds to the enquiries based on pre-fed inputs for any industry as an account-related resolution for the banking sector, transaction-related support for the retail sector and helping the customer with product troubleshooting and usage. 

Challenges with XR Human

• The high cost of installation, maintenance, and various other support services associated with XR human
• Hinder market revenue growth to some extent over the forecast period.
• Only well-financed organisations with R&D and Innovation budgets can leverage the benefits of XR humans by investing in it.
• Effectiveness of XR humans to act intuitively in decision-making under certain situations.
• The accuracy of the software program to detect emotions and respond accordingly is low.
• The complexity of handover the calls by XR human to a real agent.
• Humans still need to administer XR human communication.
• Reservation by the customer to interact with XR Human versus a human to resolve customer query
• Data Privacy Concerns among customers to approve access of cameras and microphones to XR humans.

Benefits of XR Human

• 24X7 support with zero cost in production.
• Reduces dependency on agent and thus reduces AHT (Average Handle Time).
• Remote assistance reduces the cost of providing XR human support.
• Maintain consistency in the level and context of information shared.
• XR experts provide a quick resolution to help enhance operational efficiencies and increase CSAT (Customer Satisfaction).
• Provide access to expert knowledge and reduction in training errors.
• Product visualization has proven to build skills faster—from competency to mastery.
• Trainees using XR humans learn faster, with improved retention.
• Newer workers can become effective in the field quickly.
• Optimal resource utilization, speedy maintenance and repair, and reduced travel save not only present but potential costs. 

Recommendation and Conclusion

The connection between real humans and XR humans is growing beyond just watching a tool on the computer. The XR can now read and interact with us, just as we do in real life. Communication and interaction are becoming a two-way street and are adding a new facet of freedom and reinvention XR Human technology is getting ready to revolutionize our everyday life in a manner that was a distant actuality. It is bridging the void between the actual and synthetic world. To harness the power of this technology flawlessly, one must sport an innovation & functional cap and consider a few leads.

• XR humans as a tool in a vacuum are not particularly useful; thoughtful implementation and addressing critical business challenges will help maximize its potential.
• Developing 3D models can impact cost and delivery time. However, repurposed CAD and other digital files created during the development of physical equipment can enrich XR experiences.
• XR human technology is vision-based and immersive, so considering the user’s field of view needs to ensure an optimal experience.
• The hardware and content authoring software should be compatible with the user’s physical device to allow usage of all features and capabilities, such as sensors, processing, voice command, and eye-tracking.

While the development and platform cost are high, XR is easy to deploy, massively scalable, cheaper in production, and infinitely customizable with language, accent, and availability. They’re the cool older sibling of the chatbot, fitted with AI, a face, and the degree to echo users’ feelings and reply intelligently to their information, including nonverbal signals. In the future, we may get our own XR assistant or an XR teacher. We’ll be able to even order goods like merchandise, food, prescriptions, and other things through an XR, who will then deliver tangible real-world objects to us. The journey is long, and a lot of enhancement and advancement remains before this technology can reach its full potential; many questions remain unanswered about the implications of XR humans on the lives of real people. But the XR has been out already in the digital world to serve humans.