With safe distancing measures, many organizations, especially those in the service sector, are trying to reduce physical contact with customers. “Contactless customer service” has become a new norm to curb COVID-19. For example, Starbucks encourages their customers to order and pay for their coffee prior to visiting the store, and hotels in Singapore are planning to be contactless with guests in their entire stay, from check-in to room service.

As a result of these social distancing policies and contactless services, businesses might start to adopt more service robots to serve their customers. In fact, this trend is not new. Prior to the pandemic, we have already seen an increase of service and industrial robots at work. The pandemic is serving as a catalyst to further accelerate the growth of robots at work.

This could be a win-win scenario for both organisations and customers. Organisations are able to reduce personnel costs while customers can be assured that they would not catch any infectious diseases in customer service encounters.

But how should organisations programme their service robots to maximise customer satisfaction? One large-scale survey of customer rage found that 56% of Americans had complaints about a customer service experience in the past year, and most enraging of all are automated service experiences, such as when people are left screaming at phone algorithms that prevent them from talking to a real person. Research in psychology echoes this customer sentiment and suggests that customers are generally averse to algorithms and robots.

If customers dislike automated algorithm and robots so much, how can organisations successfully implement them without a reduction in customer satisfaction?

In my research, I found that anthropomorphism – imbuing robots with human-like characteristics, motivations, intentions, and emotions – can effectively reduce customers’ aversion towards robots.

In an experiment, I randomly assigned participants to one of two customer serving experiences in which a robot serves them a drink. In the anthropomorphism condition, the robot introduced “herself” as Allison. “She” also spoke in a normal female voice in an American accent. Finally, the screen mounted to the robot displayed a smiley face during the study and its lips would move while “speaking.” In the control condition, the robot introduced itself as robotic arm 57174, spoke in a mechanistic voice, and only displayed a blank screen. I found that participants reported a significantly higher level of customer satisfaction in the anthropomorphism condition than those in the control condition.

In a second study, I conducted a field study in a hotel in which robots are used as customer service agents. I again manipulated the robots’ anthropomorphism and all of the findings replicated – participants who interacted with anthropomorphised robots reported higher satisfaction throughout their stay at the hotel.

The implications of my research is clear. If organisations wish to implement more service robots, they should try to anthropomorphise them. There are easy and non-intrusive ways to enhance anthropomorphism, such as assigning names to robots, programming robots with a human voice, and putting a face on robots. These subtle strategies can likely enhance customers’ satisfaction with service robots, thereby maximising customer satisfaction and in turn organisational performance.