Robotic Customer Service In Action!
‘Robotic’ customer service is often seen as a negative thing, but according to scientists in China, it’s the future! When you go into the Tian Waike restaurant in Kunshan, Eastern China, you are looked after by an unsmiling waiter who doesn’t make eye contact or ask ‘how are you today?‘ He simply delivers your order promptly and efficiently without fuss. Apparently, he’s not the only one – there are others that do simple food preparation tasks without conversing with colleagues or customers – Yes, they’re robots!
Song Yugang, the restaurant’s founder, says that using robots allows him to employ around a third of the normal number of human staff that would be required to run a restaurant of this size. Zong Ning, the manager of a partially robot-staffed restaurant in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said: “The robots are 100% obedient and require charging only once a day. They are more efficient than waiters.”
The restaurant is actually a showcase for the products of Pangolin, a company that is cashing in on China’s increasing demand for robots to undertake simple tasks. According to The Times, this growth is not likely to be limited to China. Last year a report published by the University of Oxford said that 47% of the US labour force could be replaced with robots over the next 20 years.
Pangolin says it has orders for “thousands” of food service robots and is considering opening similar restaurants abroad with London being a target destination.
Funny, thought I’d already seen that in some places! Robotic, automated people simply ‘following the script’ is all too common.
