Luxury experiences of tomorrow: Fusion of physical and digital touchpoints

The word ‘luxury’ is about how we experience a product or service, and not exactly the product per se. The same product can feel luxurious when accompanied by a stellar experience across touchpoints, or it might come across as low-quality if the experience is below par. In the digital era, tech-driven innovation is rapidly redefining touchpoints, and that’s where luxury brands are facing a critical challenge. There is a need to prevail through continuous improvement of experience, and technology is being seen as a key enabler here. However, this has to be done in a way that the sense of ‘refinement’ remains undiluted for the brand patrons. 

How can a brand achieve that?

The key lies in neither remaining stubbornly rooted in the traditional practices nor undergoing digital transformation to the extent that the essence of luxury is lost. While crafting luxury experiences for the digital future, brands have to create a fusion that delivers tech-enabled luxury experiences in a way that the essence remains intact. 

Digital butler at your service

Luxury experiences are defined by the seamless and effortless processes associated with services. Consumers need not tell what they need, need not go through cumbersome processes every time, and yet they get everything done precisely the way they desire. That’s luxury, and technology is now facilitating this. Imagine a hotel concierge who knows you by name, a shopping assistant who knows what preferences you have, and what you had purchased on the last visit. You enter a hotel suite where the temperature is exactly what you prefer, and the room is set with amenities that you need without having to instruct the staff for it. It is this extent of personalisation that technology is now able to create digitally, alongside ensuring that the personal touch, the delight is not lost. 

For instance, let’s take a scenario where a luxury automotive brand leverages AI to understand a potential customer’s digital usage patterns, lifestyle choices, and preferences stated in the past. All this information is leveraged to create a personalised experience for the customer’s next visit, even before they step into the showroom for a test drive. A vehicle customised as per the customer’s preferences, such as the colour, the interiors, the seat heights, temperature, etc, is readied, and the test-drive route is mapped as per the customer’s interests. With such a fusion of technology into the physical touchpoints would enable the sales team to have a free-flowing conversation that is not interrupted by frequent need to adjust things or detailing the vehicle specifics. Thus, the human touch remains intact, the experience is superior, and it is all tech-enabled. Essentially, it is technology under the hood that does all the heavy lifting silently and efficiently. 

It is this fusion that is now making experiential marketing gain ground over the traditional advertising. There is no need to bring in screens, and gadgets for every single touchpoint, but the essence lies in using technology to eliminate friction, speed up processes, and ensuring customer delight. 

Creating exclusive moments that linger on

This future-ready blend of digital and physical is capable of delivering luxury experiences that go beyond the limits of physical effort. A top-end luxury watchmaker might invite its top fifty clients for an intimate dinner at an exclusive location. The exclusivity of the venue and the gourmet food experience are made unforgettable by strategically designing the experience using AR elements. The guests just point their phones at their watches to observe a magnified digital display of how intricate the movement of each tiny part is, and how expert craftspeople are manually assembling similar watches back in Switzerland, everything being perfected to fractions of a millimetre. Thus, they are able to familiarise and appreciate the brand’s heritage, craftsmanship, ethos, and other aspects in an immersive storytelling environment.

Such a tech-driven experience doesn’t end with the dinner, but it lingers on in the client’s memory, and they would keep revisiting the visuals, recalling the processes whenever they look at their watches or discuss the finesse of watchmaking with others. 

It is this power of Virtual Reality that is helping marketers visually create spaces such as the Swiss watch factory or the production room of a fashion house or the shop floor of a luxury automobile maker. These are places that can’t be recreated everywhere, but with VR, no matter where the client is, it is possible to give a visual tour with exact details. Such experiences help build a brand understanding and emotional advocacy, which is far stronger than the one achieved through high-voltage regular campaigns in the conventional domain. 

Scaling personalisation with an intimate exclusivity

A major aspect of ‘luxury’ is to ensure that all the customers feel valued through exclusive experiences that are curated for them. This is another challenge that cutting-edge technology is solving through smart personalisation that creates intimate experiences, and not those devised by algorithms. 

This can be prominently seen in the events industry. Today, there are smart event technologies that help create personalised experiences where subtle variations are created for each attendee based on the individual’s interests and preferences. For instance, there could be a scenario where everyone goes through the check-in process at the venue, but on the basis of individual’s information, the AI-powered wristbands might provide the person with follow-up content, information about various sessions that would be more synchronized to that attendee. 

The usage of AR mirrors by fashion and beauty brands is already helping customers at product launches or sales campaigns. This kind of personalised preview option is further amplified by the human experts who can provide in-depth inputs based on a prospect’s lifestyle and routines. 

The objective is to ensure an optimal experience that keeps the human connection intact alongside enhancing the luxury feel, and building meaningful brand conversations through usage of technology. 

Technology as a real value addition

One of the pitfalls that brands need to avoid is to use technology as a display prop. With the unfolding of the digital age, there is a chance that brands not utilising the technological innovations will lose ground to their competitors. It is this acknowledgement of being seen as a modern tech-oriented brand that sometimes pushes brands towards using technology for the sake of it. This is not going to impress the discerning luxury customers who know whether technology is being deployed to actually enhance the experience for them or not. 

The future of experiences is going to be built on the usage of purpose-driven technology in an unobtrusive manner. Digital touchpoints need to be added only if they can streamline, expedite and smoothen the experience for the users. If something can help make the end-user’s experience more personal, unique, and emotionally resonant, then that’s where tech should be deployed. Otherwise, it is not needed. 

The way ahead

As the world of luxury evolves and adopts greater fusion of digital technology with physical touchpoints, brands that use technology to gain a better understanding of their clients and deploy tools to enhance their experiences will ace the game. Technologies such as AI are just the next level of operations, but the expectations of luxury experiences are still defined by the age-old concept of making people feel valued and extraordinary. Digital technologies shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for the physical experiences or vice versa. Still, these two aspects have to be combined into one seamless and exceptional unforgettable experience!

This article is penned by Sumit Govind Sharma, Founder of LuxExclusive. 

Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.