Virtual Assistants in a "hologram": A revolution for services?

Holograms are still a thing of the future but a British company has developed a smart approach to create a hologram illusion and is using it deliver a better customer experience at airports. Tensator has developed a technology called Virtual Assistant which projects the image of a person on a glass-wall to create the illusion of a person talking to you. At the first glance this might look like a cheap gimmick but one of their use-cases looks quite promising.

Educating travelers about security checks

Security checks at airports have become quite a hassle but for frequent travellers who know which items are prohibited and that you have to take out your laptop of your bag it is still a manageable process. The problem is usually with travellers who are not regulars at an airport and who slow down security checks. Even though there are signs that clearly tell you what you should do, for some reason they go mostly unnoticed.

At this critical moment the virtual assistants come in and educate travellers what to do. There are obvious benefits such as 24/7 availability and the ability to change the message in real-time depending on the situation at the airport.

In order to confirm my hypothesis I have reached out to the team at Tensator and they have shared some insights with me. Based on the trial at Luton airport  77% of passengers noticed the Virtual Assistants in the security area at LLA, two thirds of passengers at LLA said the Virtual Assistants clearly explained how to prepare for the security search and since the Virtual Assistants were introduced at LLA in February the number of searched bags has already been reduced by 4%.

Additional use cases could be shopping malls, retail stores or other critical touch points where this technology could substitute traditional signage and combine it with a human touch to increase awareness. It would be interesting to see if this approach is able to substitute a real human interaction and if consumers perceive it as an authentic interaction or just as an eye-catching marketing tool. I think there is the potential, maybe we get to see more use cases with real-life business metrics in the future.