Specifying the Design for Customer Learning in the Mixed Reality Experience

Companies search for new ways of utilizing technologies such as the Mixed Reality (MR) in order to enrich their customer interactions. While more of these MR technologies are emerging to assist customer-employee interactions, there is a strategic choice related to scalability of how to organize these service encounters: face-to-face or digitally over the web. Eventually, the question is how much of these interactions can be automatized with acceptable tradeoffs for the customer experience and business outcomes. This study analyzes the influence of a MR design elements on the outcomes of a customer experience in a use case where the customer learning is focal for the service. The experiment comparing two conditions: face-to-face interactions and remote interactions over the web showed no difference in terms of customer experience and perceived learning. On the other hand, the ease-of-use of the technology as well as the familiarity with the subject and technology effected the customer learning. The results offer implications to both the customer experience management and the MR system design.