Sector · Sales

The weakest evidence on this site, and we are not hiding it

Glasses that whisper sales arguments in your ear are the easiest thing to imagine and the hardest to find proof of. Two insurers piloted them and said no. One measured a real saving. The rest is after-sales support wearing a sales label.

Every sector on this site was built the same way: find the cases, read them, publish what they actually measured. This one came back thinner than the others, and the honest thing is to say so at the top rather than dress up eight stories into a trend.

Two companies tried it and said no

Erie Insurance put Google Glass on eight claims staff for four months. Policyholders liked it. Erie still concluded the device was not ready to replace its claims process, because the Explorer Edition had no flash and no zoom, which is exactly what you need photographing damage in a dark basement. National ConnectForce Claims tested the same idea on catastrophe visits and found an ordinary phone did the same documentation job for less money. Neither adopted.

The one measured win

USAA put AR glasses on field property adjusters so a manager back at the office could see the same view and coach the visit live. The 2019 pilot removed 160 hours of travel for four adjusters over three months, and USAA went on to a production test with 250 pairs. That is the only number in this sector with a denominator you can check.

A real estate broker in upstate New York streamed property walkthroughs over Zoom from Vuzix M400 glasses during the 2020 lockdown and says he got a written offer the day after the first virtual open house. It is one broker, quoted in the manufacturer's own press release, and that is how it is filed.

What most of these cases actually are

Beumer, Orkel and Raymond West are not selling with glasses; they are supporting equipment already sold. A customer receives a headset, puts it on, and a technician thousands of kilometres away sees the machine through the customer's eyes. Orkel bought 40 units for exactly that. A Hyundai dealership in Mountain View put Meta glasses into its multi-point inspection so the video reaches the customer for approval, and published no approval rate, no ticket value and no named quote.

If you are looking for the sector where this technology already pays, read the labels and the decision-support pages instead. This one is where the promise is still ahead of the evidence.

Cited cases

Who
Erie Insurance, "Think Ahead" innovation program
What they did
Eight claims staff (two material-damage appraisers and two property adjusters per branch) wore Google Glass Explorer Edition on customer visits during a four-month pilot, recording video and photos of property damage while discussing the claim and the settlement with the policyholder on site.
What came out of it
Policyholders reacted positively to the device during visits, but Erie Insurance concluded that the Explorer Edition's limits (no flash, no zoom) meant the wearable was not yet ready to replace its normal claims process.
www.insurancejournal.com
Who
National ConnectForce Claims (NCC), Alpharetta, Georgia
What they did
Field claims adjusters tested Google Glass Explorer Edition on catastrophe and complex-loss visits, including earthquake damage, aiming to replace the hundreds of still photos taken per property claim with point-of-view video the adjuster could narrate while inspecting the damage in front of the policyholder.
What came out of it
NCC found that ordinary mobile phones could do the same documentation job at lower cost and did not adopt Google Glass for its claims operation.
www.insurancejournal.com
Who
USAA, field property claims adjusters
What they did
Field adjusters wore AR-enabled smart glasses (brand not disclosed in the source) during property inspections, letting a manager back at the office see the same view in real time and coach the adjuster through the visit and the damage discussion with the policyholder.
What came out of it
The 2019 pilot eliminated 160 hours of travel time for four adjusters over three months; USAA then moved to a production-level test with 250 pairs of the glasses distributed to its adjuster workforce.
newsroom.usaa360.com
Who
Marvin Krampe, sales engineer at Beumer Group
What they did
During a COVID-19 travel restriction, Beumer connected its sales engineer to a client through Beumer's own branded smart glasses so the client's own crew could install and commission a palletizer and stretch-hood packaging system with live remote guidance, instead of waiting for a Beumer technician to travel.
What came out of it
Beumer says the connection let the client finish the installation and commissioning itself with remote guidance, avoiding the travel and the extra downtime a delayed site visit would have caused; the company gives no separate quantified figure.
www.automationworld.com
Who
Mark Moon, real estate broker and franchise partner at Howard Hanna Lake Group
What they did
Moon wore Vuzix M400 smart glasses, tethered to a Verizon jetpack for connectivity, to stream a live video and audio feed of a property walkthrough to prospective buyers over Zoom, letting them see the home and ask questions in real time in place of an in-person open house.
What came out of it
In Vuzix's press release, Moon says he received a written offer the day after his first virtual open house with the glasses on April 18, 2020, that his second listing shown the same way was "just as successful", and that he planned to keep using the glasses as much as possible going forward.
www.prnewswire.com
Who
Orkel, Norwegian manufacturer of compactors and agricultural machinery (Fannrem, Norway)
What they did
Orkel standardised on the RealWear HMT-1 across its sales and dealer network for after-sales maintenance, remote assistance and remote commissioning of its heavy agricultural machines. The person wearing the device is the customer: the announcement says every customer needing commissioning or technical service receives a kit with an HMT-1, puts it on and calls an Orkel technician, who then sees the machine through the customer's camera, using VSight Remote and Microsoft Teams. Orkel's research and development team tested several glasses models before choosing the HMT-1.
What came out of it
The initial purchase was 40 units, earmarked in the source itself for "remote after-sales maintenance, remote servicing and remote commissioning". Svein Erik Syrstad, an Orkel technician, says in the text: "Our customers really appreciate the value of the system because we are able to provide a much faster level of support when an issue arises." There is no percentage, no count of avoided trips and no measured downtime. The text does not describe sales support: the use described is after-sales, and it fits this sector the same way the Beumer case does, through the sales and dealer network.
www.auganix.org
Who
CardinaleWay Hyundai and Genesis of Mountain View, a dealership, with UpdatePromise's Symphony platform
What they did
The text says the dealership put Meta AI glasses (no model is named) into the workshop's multi-point inspection flow: the technician works through the checklist by voice command while the glasses capture photos and video, and that material feeds the Symphony platform, which takes the documentation to the service advisor and to the customer for work-order review, remote authorisation and payment. The integration was built with the Meta Wearables Device Access SDK Toolkit.
What came out of it
No result was published: there is no approval rate, no value per work order, no time to authorisation and nobody named giving a testimonial. The claim that this is the first automotive retail dealership to integrate the device into a live inspection flow appears in the source with no attribution, and could not be confirmed on the primary pages (updatepromise.com and autosuccessonline.com returned 403 through Cloudflare during this task).
www.autoconnectedcar.com
Who
Raymond West, a materials handling equipment dealer (forklifts, pallet racks, conveyors, docks), and Adam Wyand, training and technology development manager
What they did
The field technicians answering customer calls use the RealWear Navigator 520 (the catalogue entry is under the slug realwear-navigator-500, which records the 520 as a variant) connected to a diagnostic workflow built in Microsoft Power Apps (called the ADTA Troubleshooting Workflow), with Teams and SharePoint behind it, to follow the script and open documents at the customer's site without taking their hands off the equipment, including near high-voltage systems and in confined spaces.
What came out of it
Adam Wyand says in the source that the app "has been a critical tool in 2024 for our field technicians who face pressure to resolve customer issues". RealWear, which publishes the case study, reports faster customer response and fewer escalations, with no numbers at all: there is no count of calls handled, no first-visit resolution rate and no hours saved. The work described is post-sale field technical support, not negotiating with the customer, the same caveat recorded for the Beumer case.
www.realwear.com

Devices used

Talk to us

Back to the use cases