Solution

Dutt and his team began exploring options to translate in-house events to a virtual format, accelerating and standardizing a trend that was already taking shape. He revealed, "Prior to the pandemic, some of our more innovative consultants had experimented with leveraging social media platforms to host virtual events. The challenge was that social media was not designed for our use case as it's difficult to recreate the warmth and familiarity of a friend's kitchen in a digital format. It simply wasn't possible to deliver the full potential of Pampered Chef events—to engage, learn and share through those platforms."

Pampered Chef evaluated several options to manifest its vision, landing on a 360-degree, photorealistic model kitchen from Theia Interactive. Dutt acknowledged, "In terms of the solution, it was very high-quality and realistic. Some other virtual environments look too much like video games. Plus, Theia had created elegant digital kitchens previously, so we knew they had expertise in our space. In addition, the Theia team inspired confidence and their 'measure, test, learn' attitude matched ours."

The result is an immersive virtual party experience that offers Pampered Chef consultants a unique platform to share products in photorealistic environments, let guests explore interactive, 3D models of products and provide videos, recipes, and everything else a customer may need to make a purchase decision. Achieving this outcome demanded a deliberate, expert-led approach.

"The success of any implementation requires strong communication and project management skills. The Theia team came in with a robust plan with clear outcomes and expectations. The project manager was on-point in terms of communicating about the deliverables and deadlines and managed all of it effectively. When there was an issue, the team was responsive, available and worked until we found a suitable solution," Dutt observed.

He elaborated, "Theia is all about innovation and continuous improvement. They are always open to feedback, to tuning, enhancing and advancing the solution."

As an example, Dutt points to a modification the Theia team developed based on consultant feedback during the pilot. He highlighted, "Our consultants shared that they wanted training on how to navigate around the Virtual Kitchen. Theia Interactive built in a tour guide option. It was a relatively small detail uncovered in testing that Theia invested in which has improved the consultant experience significantly."

Because Theia had expertise in producing virtual kitchens, that know-how was leveraged for the Pampered Chef Virtual Kitchen, speeding the effort. "Our consultants have been impressed with the Virtual Kitchen. They report that it’s highly realistic, much like their own kitchens or even their dream set-up. And we continue to enhance it." One significant new iteration included a gamification option. Dutt cited, "Guests go on a quest to find a golden spoon. Once they find it, there are a series of secret questions for them to answer. The response has been electric!"