Guest article by Jenny van Dorn.
These are exciting times for people following the developments in the field of robotics. We are flooded with new robots coming out (for instance, watch this), coupled with ever-accelerating developments in the realm of large language models that will also fuel the developments in the field of robots and robotic systems. However, what do we precisely mean by robots? Robots are autonomous technology in a physical form that are also able to conduct physical tasks. Autonomous technology are machines that can perform actions without (or with minimal) human intervention and change their behavior responding to unanticipated events. In the field of service research, social robots are a particular relevant type of robot because they are made to establish social and affective relations with their users and have automated social presence. From the above definition, one important prerequisite of calling something a robot emerges, and that is its physical form. Robot physicality matters because people form more personal bonds with physical robots, interact longer with them and better comply with their requests. This also makes robots promising helpers in service industries plagued by personnel shortages that will only increase as societies grow older and older, as for instance is the case in health and elderly care.
The people that matter
All these exciting developments make it tempting to direct our focus to these robots, their capabilities, and how these capabilities could even evolve more in the future. However, if human-robot-interactions are examined in the field of service research, such a focus on the technology itself may lead us away from what really matters – the people interacting with such technology at the organizational frontline, that is, the point of contact between an organization and its customers.
The first person that matters here is the human employee. For robots, service environments are very complex. Robots struggle to function in such environments without any human involvement, making it likely that robots and humans will divide tasks and work side-by-side in so-called cobotic teams to serve people. It is predicted that within the next decade, around a third of current full-time occupations will be transformed into augmented services delivered by teams of humans and machines – and we already see this transition now, given that many of us are nowadays co-working with autonomous technology without physical representation such as Chat GPT. Unfortunately, accepting robot colleagues and co-working with them is not an easy task – as an upcoming literature stream in organisational behaviour shows.
The second person that matters is the human cobotic teams provide service to. Also here, all is not so rosy, as previous literature shows that a robot replacing a human service employee can make consumers feel threatened. Moreover,instead of interacting with a human and a robot in a cobotic team, people rather face only one human employee. One would expect that two employees are better than one, but if one of the two is a robot, that seems not to be the case. Putting the robot in the lead in human-robot teams makes things even worse, making it imperative to make the human employee the team leader.
Finding optimal working arrangements
Cobotic human-robot teams that deliver service are here to stay. Yet, both the human consumer and the human co-worker are sceptical about robots. For service researchers, it is therefore imperative to investigate how both the human consumer and the human co-worker can embrace human-robot teams. Fortunately, our service discipline is exceptionally well equipped for such endeavours because it unites scholars from different backgrounds: Marketing and consumer behaviour, organisational behaviour, innovation management, and IT. We need to join forces and investigate how consumers as well as employees can become more accepting of robots as a social entity involved in service provision.
How can the potential of robot colleagues – that take on the dirty, dangerous and dull tasks without complaining or asking for a pay raise – be realized? Are robot “bosses” needed, and what does it take to accept them, both from the perspective of the human consumer and co-worker? What fascinates me is that in some cases, people already accept autonomous technology as a “boss” – for instance, Uber drivers and grocery deliverers are often managed by algorithms. But for robots, this acceptance is not yet the case, and we neither know what drives these differences, nor under which circumstances robot bosses could be more acceptable. What are the optimal working arrangements in which robots and human employees should work together to safeguard service satisfaction and consumer well-being, as well as job satisfaction and work performance of the human employee? What are the effects of the rise of cobotic teams on how the human employee and consumer relate to each other? What are the consequences of cobotic teams for how employees organize their work, their work identity, and the extent to which they identify with the organization they work for? What are broader implications for organizations, other stakeholders, the entire service ecosystem, and governmental institutions?
Human-centered societies – with robots
On a broader level, it is inevitable that our societies will change and adapt while robot labor becomes an indispensable part of many services. Those following the developments around artificial digital entities – such as digital friends in apps like Replika, or grieftech and ghostbots such as Séance AI – have long realized that also the social relations that form the fiber of our societies are currently undergoing immense changes. It is our, human, job to define what should be the role of robots in service industries, but also in our society at large. Are there limits to robot involvement in service provision, and who defines these? Do we need mandatory robot self-disclosure? Do service companies have to disclose the percentage of robot labor they use? Do we need to certify responsible service robot use? How can we avoid that human service becomes the privilege of the rich? When it comes to health and elderly care: In which part of the care journey is it acceptable to involve robots? Which service task are so important that we as a society demand a human to do them? Will service episodes become interactions between a customer’s and a frontline employee’s robot, and if yes, is this desirable? Do we accept robots not only taking the role of a co-worker, but also as (romantic) partners and companions? These are just a few of the pressing questions that we will have to answer in the upcoming decades – and we unfortunately cannot rely on ChatGPT to help us out.
Jenny van Dorn
Professor of Services Marketing, University of Groningen
Lead Researcher, Grunnegs-speaking robot
References:
– Van Doorn, J., Smailhodzic, E., Puntoni, S., Li, J., Schumann, J. H., & Holthöwer, J. (2023). Organizational frontlines in the digital age: The Consumer–Autonomous Technology–Worker (CAW) framework. Journal of Business Research, 164, 114000.
– Shanks, I., Scott, M.L., Mende, M. et al. (2024). Cobotic service teams and power dynamics: Understanding and mitigating unintended consequences of human-robot collaboration in healthcare services. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-024-01004-1
Illustration: ChatGPT.
