Daikin
The Challenge
Smart industrial HVAC buyers want to “kick the tires” before they write six-and-seven-figure checks for equipment. Engineering firms, contractors and building owners like to walk around, look inside and see the features before investing in equipment that needs to last 50 years, but these products are as big as a bus and are designed to keep a hospital or skyscraper cool, which makes demos challenging. Customers need to travel to a location that has them installed or to the factory where they’re built. And they still can’t see much more than a giant box, since the competitive advantages are under the hood.
The Solution
Global HVAC leader Daikin Applied Americas partnered with the Gronstedt Group to create the ultimate customer experience of hyper-realistic, life-sized 3D versions of their giant industrial equipment in virtual reality. Customers don the reality-bending headsets and experience the superpower of X-ray vision, which lets them see how water and refrigerant work together to keep building temperatures comfortable. A 3D audio soundtrack shows how quietly the unit operates and the room goes dark for a demonstration of how rapidly service is restored during a power outage.
The multi-user VR showroom lets sales reps show customers around the digital equipment, pointing out features and benefits, like low refrigerant and oil-free magnetic bearings. Users can control the equipment from a wrist menu and run them at 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% capacity. Customers and sales reps enjoy a sense of social presence as they explore the competitive advantages of the equipment together. After an elevator ride up to the roof top, they can walk around a unit and click on modules that will slide out to reveal their inner workings.
“I can’t believe you took all our technical information and created such a phenomenal user experience,” Arthur Rizoli, Director of Centrifugal Products, Daikin.
The Results
The VR program launched to rave reviews at an event in Phoenix with some 1,500 customers and sales reps. Five days of demos with 16 headsets afforded a first-hand taste of the VR experience. Every single survey participant saw value in the experience, with 80 percent indicating “Great Value.”
Comments from users included:
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When can we see all the other products?
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You can show in five minutes what takes five years to understand about chillers
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This was worth my trip to Phoenix
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@!#$% b@#$%...this is amazing!
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“The introduction of VR was a success, there is a buzz, even a bit of a frothed frenzy among our reps, service partners and engineers to use VR,” Brian Dewhirst, Sr. Manager, Learning Technology, Daikin.
Aligning With Sales & Marketing
“Introducing VR into the sales channel has been a game-changer in our sales and learning success. Our VR program is a venue for sales meetings, a customer education tool and a platform for field training.”
Laura Masica, VP of People Experiences, Daikin Applied
Daikin aligns its enterprise metaverse strategy with sales and marketing. Sales reps can meet up with customers from all over the world on a virtual rooftop or basement to watch its equipment in action, exploding them into constituent parts, untangling their flow of water and refrigerant to visualize competitive differentiators.
The VR version isn’t just more portable, but more pedagogical as well. Clients can poke their heads inside the equipment while it’s running and watch its inner workings from any angle. Making the products readily accessible to the sales organization is key to their ability to sell these six-and-seven-figure investments.
Cross-Platform – Multi-Player
The VR program can also be deployed to flat screen devices, giving everyone a portal to the digital world. The Gronstedt Group developed a 50” touchscreen version that brings Daikin’s 3D program to a roadshow trailer when there’s not enough floor space for a VR demo. Phone, iPad and laptop versions are also useful for Daikin sales reps. Leveraging cross-platform, multi-player 3D solutions from phones and giant touch screens to VR headsets allows them to bring products to engineers and customers with ease.
This is only Daikin’s first step into the metaverse. The virtual showroom will be a venue for sales meetings. Senior Daikin executives can join customer meetings remotely using a VR headset or PC for a virtual walk-around. And it will be used for recruitment, training and development.