SalesTech Star Interview with Rachel Lanham, COO at Pixvana
Tell us about your journey into Interactive Technology.
Pixvana’s founders have a diverse background in Interactive Technology, and hail from Senior Product and Engineering leadership roles at Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and Lucasfilm. Believing that XR is the medium of the future, Pixvana created SPIN Studio, the world’s only integrated XR platform that helps scale immersive experiences by simplifying the process of creating, editing, and sharing interactive 360/VR videos.
Pixvana is working to make it easier than ever for enterprises to create and deploy XR solutions for company learning and development.
What is Pixvana and how does it fit into the modern Digital Technology stack? Tell us about your latest product launch SPIN Studio 2.0.
Pixvana is a Virtual Reality solutions provider, helping enterprises develop cutting-edge approaches to solving business challenges. Our combination of breakthrough VR technology and the award-winning creative team makes Pixvana the perfect partner for managing all aspects of project development – from strategy to execution.
Pixvana just launched SPIN Studio 2.0, bringing groundbreaking improvements to its industry-leading XR platform for creation, editing, and distribution. The new platform provides faster speed and even higher video quality, rendering data up to 10x faster than the previous version, and delivering today’s best-possible “5.7K” maximum streaming and download versions of all content for Oculus headsets.
SPIN Studio 2.0 also introduces three critical interactive features designed for training-specific experiences: Q&A, quizzing, and scavenger hunts, to help learning and development teams assess performance and progress.
Finally, for the first time ever, Pixvana’s enterprise-ready platform allows organizations to deliver XR content across multiple headsets as well as 2D screens (phones, tablets, and PCs), scaling experiences and providing access to modernized content, from anywhere at any time.
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How is Pixvana driving transformation in Customer Service and Training?
Pixvana is working to revolutionize the way people learn by creating XR training experiences that improve content retention, increase audience engagement, and foster greater empathy.
Working with customers, we create custom XR training solutions that are designed for the modern workforce and deliver better results to the organization than traditional training methods, such as classroom, online, and manuals. Pixvana specializes in developing curricula including training for critical skills, employee development, diversity and inclusion, customer service, and more.
Which business groups are using your Product? Which geographies have been the fastest to adopt your Product offering?
Everyone from private enterprises to nonprofits, Healthcare companies, and conferences/events have been leveraging Pixvana and our offerings. We’ve seen the most interest and impact with companies that have large, high-over, frontline workforces that need to train more quickly and effectively than traditional training methods, like online learning and job shadowing allow for.
What are the key trends in Customer Service for 2019?
Consumers today are demanding more efficient and more personalized service – emerging technologies like AI and XR have become the path forward to arming people providing the services in person or via call centers with what they need to meet today’s high expectations.
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How does Pixvana upend Customer Service and Support with AI-powered automation?
As an XR solutions company, we are not delivering AI-powered automation. What we are doing is dramatically reducing the time to competency for the humans that will remain part of the Customer Service equation. In the future, XR will provide employees with the best training and readiness programs as well as on-the-job support in order to enact those best practices in real-time.
Where do you see AR VR Technologies for Sales training and Performance management?
Enterprises are increasingly looking to immersive experiences to meet business objectives, particularly as it relates to talent development. Companies are realizing the deeper value of the medium — it’s the ability to completely focus a user’s concentration, delivering the unparalleled presence, empathy, and immersion. In fact, recent research has found that VR training is more effective in driving recall accuracy than traditional desktop computer-based training.
How is Customer Services for AR VR technology products different compared to other technologies, for instance, IT SaaS and Cloud?
AR and VR are frontier technologies so customer service isn’t merely about troubleshooting as it might be for more established services within SaaS and Cloud. Customer service in our case is as much about education and thought leadership is it is about supporting the use of our platform and services.
How do you AR VR in your own Business Operations? Give us some user scenarios.
Pixvana is a top provider of XR training solutions so we “walk the talk” and use VR experiences to onboard new employees into our company and culture. And of course, we are the only provider of an ingenic VR creation system – allowing ourselves and our customers to make VR experiences while in VR.
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Thank You, Rachel, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.
Pixvana is a Seattle-based software startup building a video creation and delivery platform for the emerging mediums of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality (XR). Our founding team of Forest Key, Scott Squires, Bill Hensler, and Sean Safreed brings together a unique mix of film making, film technology, and proven startup expertise.
Collectively, we have been fundamentally involved in the two largest shifts in media in this generation: the move from analog to digital production and effects for television and cinema, and the transition from broadcast to web and mobile-based video delivery.
Rachel is the Chief Operating Officer at Pixvana, where she oversees day-to-day operations and focuses on building relationships with innovative companies that are looking to unlock the power of XR.
She previously served as an Executive and Client Partner at Avenue A, which became aQuantive before being sold for $6.3 billion to Microsoft. Joining in 1999, Lanham was one of the key contributors to driving growth, helping pioneer digital advertising concepts and practices for many well-recognized brands such as Weight Watchers, MillerCoors, and Levi’s.Rachel