The application markets of customer service robot expanding quickly

The customer service robot market will be worth US$88 million by 2022, according to a report Tractica released earlier this week. Annual shipments are expected to increase from 2,730 units in 2016 to nearly 4,800 in 2022. The robots will be humanoid and non-humanoid, and telepresence robots, chatbots, and stationary customer interactive systems excluded.

Nearly half of this artificial intelligent robotics for customer service will be deployed in the Asia Pacific Region, North America, and Europe. According to the report, the business demand for this kind of intelligent robot is driven by the following factors: interactive marketing and re-branding strategies; the cost of human staff; customer service digitization and competition; robotics as a service for customer behavioral analytics; the shifting roles of human staff; initiatives to promote robots for the service industry, particularly in Japan and China.

The intelligent robots will be used in situations where customer interactions are standardized and repetitive -- such as in banks, shopping malls, family entertainment centers, exhibitions and events, airports and stores, Tractica noted.

Japan's Henn-na Hotel, for example, is fully staffed by robots, pointed out by Ray Wang, the principal analyst at Constellation Research.

A number of organizations already are using robots on a trial basis in the United States:

1. Mineta San Jose International Airport began using three customer service robots in 2016;
2. Lowe's introduced an autonomous retail service robot in 11 of its stores throughout San Francisco in 2016, and retail service robots also are being deployed in its OSH stores;
3. Target ran a one-week test at one of its San Francisco stores, using robots to help stock shelves and take inventory; it is considering building a concept store staffed by customer service robots.

China's EVA Air and Japan Airlines are using customer service robots, as are Alaska's St. Mary's Airport, Scotland's Glasgow Airport and Japan's Haneda Airport. China’s Sanbot service robot is for Shenzhen International Airport, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, and Gongbei customs services. With instant access to a corporate database or Cloud service, robots will reduce the amount of time wasted when dealing with customer queries dramatically.

Robots can deal with standard questions, said Cindy Zhou, principal analyst at Constellation Research. However, "customers still look for humans for any real assistance with problems," she told CRM Buyer. Though it cannot work independently without human support if customer really need further help, the intelligent robot is still loved by more and more people and the application markets are very large.