Customer Story: Digital Twin Studios & Virgin Hotels
- November 1, 2021
- Customer Stories, VR
Customer Story Overview
Virtual reality (VR) isn’t just for gaming. It also offers an exciting new opportunity for workforce development.
“VR can give trainees a sense of familiarity with a space before entering it,” says Marcus Brown, Partner at Digital Twin Studios. “It actually helps your brain become more comfortable and confident in executing certain roles and responsibilities.”
It’s for this reason that DTS has entered the VR space in industries ranging from healthcare to hospitality. DTS creates custom content for blue chip companies to help them train their employees on technical processes, customer service, and more.
One of those companies is Virgin Hotels––a forward-thinking brand known for challenging the status quo.
"Throughout my career, I’ve always been interested in disruptive technologies. When I met Marcus and saw what Digital Twin Studies was capable of creating, I knew this was an opportunity for us to do something unique with how we train our team," explains Clio Knowles, Chief People Person at Virgin Hotels.
“Virgin Hotels values innovative technology,” explains Brown. “They want to utilize something that is fun and interactive so that it not only helps with information retention, but helps with recruitment and retention of employees.”
DTS had an exciting opportunity to help Virgin Hotels improve their customer service with VR training. But before forging ahead with the partnership, they had one significant hurdle to overcome: deploying their content to headsets at scale.
The Company
Digital Twin Studios (DTS) builds custom training content for enterprise level companies.
The Challenge
DTS is partnering with Virgin Hotels to create virtual content for training hotel staff. They needed a solution to help them deploy content to VR headsets in a way that’s scalable and efficient.
The Solution
ArborXR makes it easy for DTS to manage headsets and deploy content across hundreds of VR headsets–creating a sustainable system for Virgin Hotels to train employees at scale.
The Challenge
DTS is expert in creating custom content for VR-based training. But in the past, sending that content to headsets was a challenge.
“We had to take all of our content, place it on a USB stick, and mail it to clients,” says Brown. “Or, we had to create an FTP server, share the link, and have them download the content.”
Brown continues, “There were a lot of steps in that process that made it tedious for our clients.”
When DTS began partnership with Virgin Hotels two years ago, they knew they wanted to do things differently.
"As Chief People Person, it is imperative to me that our teams at all of our properties truly understand the Virgin Hotels culture," says Knowles.
"While I schedule as many visits as possible to personally facilitate our employee orientations, we needed a solution for new teammates who joined a week or two before an official orientation could be scheduled," continues Knowles.
“We wanted to deliver our content in a way that was easier, faster, and better,” says Brown. “My focus is to create long term relationships with all of our clients. The way to do that is to make sure that they're happy with what you deliver.”
“We needed a magic bullet,” continues Brown.
To help them with this challenge, DTS turned to ArborXR––a content deployment and management solution for companies who want to leverage the power of VR.
The Solution
The team at DTS found ArborXR through online research. After some positive conversations, DTS decided to move ahead with ArborXR as a distribution platform for their VR clients, starting with Virgin Hotels.
First, ArborXR made it possible for DTS to install content remotely with very little downtime.
“We can set a headset on kiosk (remote) mode and that content is immediately available and visible to the client,” says Brown. “All they have to do is click a button and it loads.”
“That makes our deployment and onboarding process a lot more seamless,” continues Brown.
ArborXR also helped DTS with the significant challenge of updating content once it’s deployed.
“We should be able to check in on their progress, fix any hiccups that come along the way, and modify existing content that we’ve developed for them,” says Brown.
“With ArborXR, we’re able to look at the health of the headset and the software. And we’re able to make immediate updates, replacing legacy files with new files if necessary.”
“It’s easy for the client to get the latest and greatest version of the content that they've invested in,” continues Brown.
Finally, ArborXR made it easy and cost-effective for Virgin Hotels to adopt their program.
“The price point from one headset to the next is very attractive,” says Brown.
“Virgin Hotels recognized that opportunity and made it very clear that they want to grow with ArborXR as we help them build more content.”
“The immersive and interactive experiences we create with DTS allows for new teammates to understand the culture of Virgin Hotels on day one in advance of, or in between, our full orientation sessions,” says Knowles. “The experiences are also great refreshers for our team while also providing unique recruitment opportunities to show potential new hires how invested we are in their success.”
Knowles continues, "ArborXR has been a great partner in this process and we could not be happier with the ease of content deployment and their willingness to support our team's success."
Looking Ahead
Virgin Hotels is still in their pilot stage with DTS, but the future is looking bright––and expansive.
“As we are onboarding our first deployment of Virgin Hotel’s orientation experience for new employees, we’re also expanding to universal operations and culture within Virgin Hotels,” says Brown.
Brown continues, “Having that anchor experience with ArborXR and with Virgin Hotels gives us a stable platform to showcase how we can deploy and manage content for other clients within Virgin.”
In other words, ArborXR turned out to be the “magic bullet” Digital Twin Studios was needing to deploy content more easily & efficiently.
Not only has ArborXR helped DTS succeed with Virgin Hotels, but many of their other clients as well.
“The experience has been great,” says Brown. “Our relationship with ArborXR continues to grow. We continue to think creatively and efficiently to service our clients. Our goals are aligned and our teachings are aligned….we’re happy to work with them.”
Interested in getting started?
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