CX Network: Can you give us a brief overview of what The Sandbox does?
Sébastien Borget: The Sandbox is a place to have fun, to create and to experience a strong sense of community. It is a virtual gaming world where players can play, build, own and monetize their experiences on virtual land that they own.
Our metaverse offers players and creators a decentralized and intuitive platform to create immersive 3D worlds and game experiences that include both original, user-generated content (UGC) and licensed experiences from over 400 major brands and IPs.
In The Sandbox, every creator is free to share, trade or sell their creations while retaining full ownership and revenue. The platform scales from simple games to ambitious experiences ranging from theme parks to virtual concerts, from fashion shows and art installations to role-playing game (RPG) worlds. We envision it as a continuous shared digital space where worlds and heroes collide to make rainbow-coloured magic.
CX Network: Looking now at the wider idea of the metaverse. How do you believe it will affect the ways that brands deliver experiences?
SB: We are seeing the brand-customer relationship evolve before our eyes. It is no longer transactional but focuses on creativity and a sense of innovation and experimentation. Brands are reinventing themselves to give more value to their fans and customers and providing experiences that offer a better sense of community is a powerful tool for doing so. Giving perks to your customers or putting on live events strengthens your brand.
The metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) fit perfectly into this strategy, and customer experiences can even be maximised with play-and-earn features that reward customers for their time in the form of tokens and value they can exchange.
The metaverse allows brands to host virtual events in lieu of, or to complement, physical events, expanding their options greatly. In the metaverse, geographical limitations do not matter, making it easier to reach a larger audience simultaneously, pushing through the limits of our imagination and creating real emotions, thanks to technology.
CX Network: How does The Sandbox manage its customer experience in the metaverse?
SB: We have internal customer support, community managers over Discord, Twitter and Telegram and ambassadors in-game who are constantly in touch with our community. This is essential as we want to know what our customers want and need and how they feel about what we are doing.
We also work with our Webhelp ambassador team to extend our outreach and provide global customer support. What is great is how our ambassadors mingle with our players and relate directly with them, giving us insights into how they think and play as well as giving us early warnings on where there may be friction points that we should address.
As a Web3 platform, we are on equal footing with our players and users and it is important that we maintain that balance and transparency at all times. Ambassadors are a great help in that respect.
CX Network: What is your advice for those brands looking to bring a metaverse experience to their CX?
SB: The metaverse is another platform for interacting with fans, customers, players and creators. I suggest you start by looking to match your strategy and goals with what your customers are looking for.
Do you want to reach them with entertainment for awareness and brand-building? Then look at how you can build an entertaining experience that syncs with your brand values and identity. Look at what value you can give your users, through the experience, NFTs and rewards you can offer and interoperability that gives them greater functionality for NFTs they may already own. Always interact with your supporters on an equal basis and never take them for granted.
CX Network: When it comes to the future or the future of metaverse experiences what do you see on the horizon?
SB: As a new generation of metaverse-native customers grows, customers will expect to interact with brands in the metaverse. This can be on an entertainment or informational level as it is now, or it can be as a medium for customer service. Currently, the interface is better suited for entertainment and information, but this can change over time.
The more we advance the tools for content creation and interaction, the more businesses will be able to accomplish on metaverse platforms like The Sandbox. Community manager in the metaverse is definitely going to be a new job role for the future. Both The Sandbox and our creators and land owners are actively recruiting them to add an extra touch of customer experience to all explorers in the metaverse.
Has your business explored the possibilities of customer experience in the metaverse? Let us know in the comments below.