Shopping can be embarrassing sometimes. One pauses, before asking the store assistant for hair loss products or haemorrhoid cream. The fear of being judged exists. When the fear grows too big, the consumer simply puts off the purchase.
Herein lies the potential of using robots to help embarrassed customers.
In our study published in the Journal of Service Management, interviewees recalled their previous embarrassing service encounters and expressed a preference to be served by robots in these cases.
“The good thing is that the robot will not judge me. That’s the big difference compared to humans, who sometimes gossip behind my back or roll their eyes,” said one interviewee.
More robots have been deployed in the service sector in recent years. Across the world, service robots are communicating with humans, taking food orders in restaurants, giving directions in airports, and providing concierge service in hotels.
And now they are shown to be better placed than humans in some embarrassing situations.
The study was done in collaboration with my peers from European and US universities—Valentina Pitardi, Stefanie Paluch and Werner H. Kunz. In our experiment, participants were instructed to imagine a visit to the pharmacy to collect an anti-fungal cream for the private parts. They reported greater embarrassment when they were shown a picture of a human pharmacist as the agent serving them, compared to a picture of a service robot as the agent.
This is because service robots do not judge. Any relations formed with the robot stayed at that setting. You would not happen to meet the robot on the street. The robot which cleaned up your vomit in the roller-coaster would not turn out to be your colleague’s neighbour. Robots are also seen to be less intrusive than humans, whose curiosity may lead to unwanted questions.
In embarrassing scenarios, some service robots are preferred more than others. This depends on the robots’ appearance.
“If the robot resembles a human, then I feel somewhat observed,” said one respondent.
Voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa are also less preferred by respondents, who fear they may suddenly say awkward things in the presence of others.
Robots that do not look like humans lead to less embarrassment. One simply types in the question via a keyboard or a touchscreen, and the non-verbal interaction offers privacy.
It is text-based chatbots that offer the greatest sense of security. One respondent said, “Writing questions to the chatbot is a natural thing for me. I also find it more comfortable to talk about embarrassing things or ask questions than to do that at the pharmacy, for example, when other customers are standing behind me.”
However, while service robots do better in providing interaction privacy, they do less well in mitigating data privacy risks. Some service robots have cameras and voice-recording functions, and respondents are wary that the stored data would be leaked.
Businesses have to do more to assuage these fears. They would also have to determine how humanlike their robots should be. But the potential of service robots is there. With them, an embarrassed shopper needs not to feel so embarrassed anymore.
The article is an abridged version of the one first published in SCMP.