Can Robots Be Used to Obtain Honest Customer Feedback?
CUHK research collaboration with leading robotics pioneer and Hong Kong hotel suggests service robots can help gauge customer satisfaction
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Imagine that you are trying a new restaurant, but their food is not special enough to warrant revisiting. When you check out, your server asks, “How was your food today?” Would you give the server your honest feedback, saying “Well, it’s not so great – I won’t be coming back.” Would you rather say “Yea, it was good,” hiding your true feelings? What if the server was a service robot, not a human staff? Would you respond differently?
Regardless of its valence, customer feedback provides valuable insights regarding how customers evaluate service quality. Particularly, in-person feedback allows service providers to be aware of the problem during the service encounter, and therefore be able to provide immediate service recovery to retain dissatisfied customers at the moment of truth. Many hospitality companies, however, find it challenging to effectively obtain in-person customer feedback: they rather rely on online channels, such as email, online review platforms and social media. Although information gathered online provides great customer insights, such post-service feedback doesn’t allow companies to fix problems on the spot. Moreover, most dissatisfied customers fail to complain and instead engage in negative word of mouth or simply exit the company. Then, how can hospitality firms obtain customer feedback at the moment of truth that leads to service improvement?
To address this question, the current research suggests a novel feedback collection method: service robots. This new study was conducted by Prof. Sungwoo Choi and Prof. Lisa Wan from The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s (CUHK) School of Hotel and Tourism Management, in conjunction with Hong Kong-based AI and robotics firm Hanson Robotics and The Mira Hong Kong hotel. In general, customer feedback behaviour is mainly influenced by social motives/concerns, such that social reciprocity drives customers to provide feedback when they are satisfied with service, while empathy inhibits customers from providing feedback when they are not satisfied. For a service robot, which is a non-social agent, we argue that the patterns might be reversed — customers are less likely to provide feedback when satisfied, while more likely to provide feedback when dissatisfied — as the social motives/concerns should be less salient in the customer-robot interaction.
Real World Setting
To test the hypotheses, the researchers conducted a field experiment at Yamm, a buffet restaurant in The Mira Hong Kong. The experiment took place on five weekdays during lunch and dinner in summer 2021. A total of 209 participants were initially recruited in exchange for a dining voucher. During the first three days of the experiment (Monday through Wednesday), Sophia, a humanoid service robot developed by Hanson Robotics, interacted with participants, while a human staff interacted with participants on Thursday and Friday.
On the way out after finishing their meal, participants were directed to a service agent (robot or human staff) standing next to the reception desk. The robot (or the human staff) greeted the participants and asked about their dining experience. Both the robot and the human staff used the same name, Sophia, and were wearing a name tag. Diners were asked what they were most satisfied and dissatisfied with their dining experience (i.e., solicited feedback). Thereafter, participants completed a questionnaire stating that the survey is for the university research purpose and their responses will not be shared with the restaurant or the hotel (to capture honest feedback). In the survey, participants were first asked to indicate their satisfaction with the dining experience on a 10-point scale. Then, they were asked to indicate to what extent they were honest when responding to the robot or the human staff on percentage.
Supporting the researchers’ hypothesis, the results showed that participants who were less satisfied provided more honest feedback to the robot than to the human staff. Moreover, participants who were very satisfied provided more honest feedback to the human than to the robot.
A New Role for Service Robots?
The short-term significance of this research lies in exploring the operational advantage of applying advanced service technology in obtaining customer feedback. Starting from 2021, demand in the hospitality industry is returning from the devastated impact under COVID-19: the occupancy rate of hotels in Hong Kong leaped to 66.4 percent in December 2021 from 58.8 percent in December 2019, according to a report published by hospitality analytics firm STR. During the same period, the revenue per room available increased from HK$572.8 to HK$621.5. However, many hotels and restaurants are met with serious staffing shortage. By the third quarter of 2021, according to the quarterly survey of employment conducted by Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong SAR Government, the accommodation and food service industry faced record- high job vacancies. Various factors pose a threat to continuous problem of manpower shortage in Hong Kong’s hospitality industry.
Other places share the same situation. In the United States, for example, 37 percent of small hospitality businesses have had their operational capacity reduced as a result of staffing shortage. Some restaurants turn to deploy service robots, which help to run food to tables and bus dirty dishes back to the kitchen. In this regard, the research suggests service robots can do additional, important service tasks – obtaining customer feedback – in addition to their simple chores. In addition to enhancing productivity, the research team showed that the advanced service technologies provide substantive value also in gaining customer insights especially during periods of manpower shortage. By enabling manageable workloads and allowing staff to focus on the guest experience, automation by service robots can further help retain staff and reduce turnover. Hence, the new knowledge from the proposed research will help hospitality companies in Hong Kong improve their overall service quality.
This is a view shared by Alexander Wassermann, Head of Hotels and Serviced Apartments of Miramar Group, who notes that automation and efficiency are two of the factors commonly attributed to application of robotics to any industry. “While this may be true to the hospitality sector as well, luxury hotels such as The Mira will always prioritise guest experience and personalisation of service, which are made possible with a sophisticated solution like humanoid robots developed by Hanson Robotics.
“We are proud to have had the chance of introducing Sophia to our hotel guests in 2020 and 2021 on a few occasions as part of the collaboration with David Hanson and his team. Experimenting with various levels of guest interactions, from a wow-factor meet and greet to scripting a character for a specific role built upon Sophia’s advanced AI-algorithms, were truly eye-opening. It gave us a range of ideas how such technology could be woven into the fabric of innovative services delivered by The Mira Hong Kong,” says Mr. Wassermann.
The Future of AI in the Service Industry
On the other hand, David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics, believes the collaboration with CUHK has helped to take the industry one step forward to show the power and usefulness of “social robots”. “The research findings demonstrated that people feel comfortable opening up and sharing their true emotions with robots which can provide valuable feedback for improving service,” he says. “This technology and science is useful in its own rights. We believe the application can be extended to other areas and potentially help to keep people safe.”
The researchers hope this study will shed light on the useful application of service robots and contribute to the well-being of frontline employees in the hospitality industry. In line with the aforementioned labour shortage, many hospitality frontline workers have exited the industry opened their own business or moved on to a different field. Wages, job security, stressful working environment and the need to deal with customers’ complaints are some of the reasons. Almost half of former hospitality workers cited emotional abuse and disrespect from customers as a factor in their decision to leave. Many workers say restaurant jobs aren’t worth the mental stress coupled with the higher chance of disease transmission.
In this regard, this research will provide valuable managerial insights on how to effectively obtain customer feedback via service robots, improve business performance and foster frontline workers’ well-being. While customer complaints may offer constructive feedback, they often result in emotional distress among frontline employees. Employees’ psychological well-being has various positive outcomes including increased productivity and job satisfaction, which in turn create positive organisational outcomes such as customer satisfaction.
About the Researchers
Prof. Lisa Wan
Prof. Lisa Wan is an Associate Professor of School of Hotel and Tourism Management and Department of Marketing at CUHK Business School. She is also a Co-Director of the Centre for Hospitality and Real Estate Research. Her works has appeared in the top-tier marketing and hospitality journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of International Marketing, and Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, etc. She reviews for major marketing and hospitality journals and is an editorial board member of Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research.
Prof. Sungwoo Choi
Prof. Sungwoo Choi is a Research Assistant Professor of School of Hotel and Tourism Management at CUHK Business School. His research focuses on bridging the literature on social psychology with that on consumer behaviour with a particular interest in service innovation and technology. His research has been published in various journals, such as the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Service Marketing, Journal of Business Research, among others. He reviews for major hospitality and tourism journals.
