{"id":11404,"date":"2021-10-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/?p=11404"},"modified":"2021-10-29T09:13:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T13:13:44","slug":"can-robots-be-better-than-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/2021\/10\/can-robots-be-better-than-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Can robots be better than humans?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Valentina Pitardi, Werner Kunz, Jochen Wirtz, Stefanie Paluch<\/em>.
More details here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can robots be better\nthan humans?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\noutbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 accelerated the deployment of robotic technology\nin various sectors including hotels, airports, and restaurants. Interestingly,\nthe adoption of the technology particularly increased in sensitive contexts\nsuch as hospitals and clinics. For example, in China service robots<\/a> are used in hospitals to\nclean and take temperatures. In Belgium, Pepper<\/a> welcomes patients and\noffers assistant reception services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Medical\nservices are particularly interesting from a consumer behavior point of view as\nthe interactions that happen in such contexts are more likely to trigger negative\nfeelings in the individuals such as embarrassment or discomfort. People\ngenerally do not like to describe their personal and embarrassing conditions to\nthe receptionist of the clinic where they visit. But what if they can talk with\na service robot instead of a human receptionist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\ntried to answer to this question in a recently published paper. We first interviewed\n40 people about service robots and embarrassment and, then, we conducted two\nexperiments presenting potential consumers with scenarios of robots\u2019\nreceptionists in medical services. These are the three most relevant results of\nour study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumers prefer robots over human employees during embarrassing\nencounters.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall,\nwe discovered that during embarrassing service encounters, people find more\ncomfortable and less awkward to interact with a frontline service robot rather\nthan a human employee. We found such effects both in a clinic scenario, where\npeople had to describe their embarrassing condition to the receptionist before\nmeeting the doctor, and in a pharmacy scenario where they had to collect an\nembarrassing medication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\nin situations where people have to disclose embarrassing information or buy\nsensitive items, a robot can provide a more comfortable interaction and\npotentially be the preferred service delivery option. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robots have low agency and no emotions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\nwould people prefer a robot over a human employee? Because people don\u2019t think\nrobots have the ability to form opinions or judge our behaviors, whereas humans\ndo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\ninterviewing our participants about embarrassing situations, we found they\ngenerally view robots as little more than machines. People think that robots do\nnot have a mind of their own, or at least they have way less mind than a human\nbeing. This means that robots are perceived as unable to feel emotions or to\ndisplay intentionality and agency in their behaviors. The lack of agency is\nwhat makes people believe that robots are unable to socially judge one\u2019s\nbehaviors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\nare we saying that robots are dumb? Not at all. Robots are sophisticated and\nintelligent machines able to perform a variety of behaviors in autonomy.\nHowever, such behaviors are not executed on purpose, and this is what makes the\ndifference. For example, when Google\u2019s AI AlphaGo beat the best Go player in\nthe world, never had any intention to beat a person. AlphaGo doesn\u2019t even know\nthat what it is doing is playing Go. For intentional behavior, consciousness is\nneeded, and robots do not have that (yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robots have no social or relational implications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another\ninteresting characteristic that makes robots more effective in embarrassing\nencounters is the absence of social relationships. For example, you will never\nmeet a robotic assistant on the street after an embarrassing situation. Robots\nalso do not have personal interests in people, so they do not talk about\ncustomers\u2019 issues behind their back or make awkward comments during the service\ninteraction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthis sense, robots provide people with a more neutral and less emotional type\nof interaction and are perceived as more discreet and private interlocutors\nthan humans. However, they also cause data privacy concerns as they can capture,\nstore and process people\u2019s sensitive information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bright side<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Service robots\u2019 execution has attracted critiques and sparked concerns about potential negative consequences for consumers. In contrary to previous research that generally points out the negative sides of interactions with robots (see for example Mende et al., 2019; Luo et al., 2019), our results offer a more positive perspective and shed light on the \u2018bright side\u2019 of service robots\u2019 adoption. At least, until they will become capable of intentional thoughts and feelings …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more in our article:
Pitardi, V.<\/a>, Wirtz, J.<\/a>, Paluch, S.<\/a> and Kunz, W.H.<\/a> (2021), “Service robots, agency and embarrassing service encounters”, Journal of Service Management<\/a>, ahead-of-print. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/JOSM-12-2020-0435<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Valentina Pitardi<\/strong> is Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Surrey, UK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Werner Kunz<\/strong> is a Professor of Marketing and Director of the Digital Media Lab at the College of Management, University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jochen Wirtz<\/strong><\/em> is Vice Dean MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, National University of Singapore<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stefanie Paluch<\/strong><\/em> is Professor for Service and Technology Marketing, RWTH Aachen University and Senior Fellow at Centre for Relationship Marketing and Service Management, Department of Marketing, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Valentina Pitardi, Werner Kunz, Jochen Wirtz, Stefanie Paluch. More details here Can robots be better than humans? The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 accelerated the deployment of robotic technology in various sectors including hotels, airports, and restaurants. Interestingly, the adoption of the technology particularly increased in sensitive contexts such as hospitals and clinics. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11404"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11450,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions\/11450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}