Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Enterprise Services

Online virtual worlds offer exciting new opportunities for enterprises or businesses. To exploit these opportunities enterprises need to find a way to integrate virtual world services with their real-world services, and to exploit virtual worlds rich collaboration environment to offer new or enhanced services. However, there are many challenges to realizing these goals, such as resolving virtual and real identifications, controlling communication sessions between real and virtual world entities, and managing resources in both worlds. In this paper, we study these issues and propose a framework for integrating virtual worlds into enterprise service work flow. We implemented a customer service in a VW contact center that is integrated with corresponding enterprise services. We also present a novel mechanism in virtual worlds that allow users to bring their own resources, along with the contact center resources, and share the resources with other customers or agents to resolve customer issues. Further, we present experiences from our prototype.