Service Robots and Customer Experience

Purpose: This paper examines whether customer experience has an influence on customer loyalty in a multichannel banking environment. Design/Method/Approach: The study used a sample of 466 bank customers in Durban, South Africa. Data from the survey of the bank customers was analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), and a theoretical model was created and empirically tested. Findings: The study findings indicate that the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty is mediated by service quality and customer satisfaction. The theoretical model developed indicates that customer loyalty can be achieved by improving customer experiences, enhancing service quality and improving customer satisfaction. Theoretical Implications: The study enhances theoretical understanding by demonstrating that the relationship between customer experience and loyalty is mediated by service quality and customer satisfaction. It highlights the importance of viewing customer experience as a multidimensional construct in multichannel banking. Practical Implications: The findings suggest that banks can improve customer loyalty by enhancing customer experience through better service quality and satisfaction. This requires integrating digital and traditional service channels and continuously improving customer touchpoints. Originality/Value: The success of service companies depends on their ability to build a loyal customer base, which can be achieved by delivering customer experiences that blend the different channels. Research Limitations/Future Research: The implication is that banks must exploit ways of improving customer experience as well as leveraging on customer satisfaction and service quality to enhance loyalty. Paper Type: Empirical JEL Classification: D12, G21, L81, M31

We can expect the field of robot end-user applications to grow, and with time, we will also see more advanced and skilled humanoid robots. To ensure that this happens in a relevant, human-friendly, and sustainable way, we need to study robots and the way they can interact with humans. We need to study both the evolving technology and human behavior, i.e., the end users (customers, clients). Understanding the usefulness and potential of social and service robots requires studying them in specific real-world contexts. This paper we disucss an experiment where we investigate the deployment of a social service robot in a retail setting. More specifically we focus on customer interactions and experiences with humanoid robots in a grocery store. By investigating real-world retail contexts, the research aims to understand the practical utility and potential of social and service robots.We used structured observation top collect data and preliminary findings reveal a range of customer reactions, from joy to fear, and highlights the novelty effect, where customers take photos and follow the robot. Findings suggest that all types of users are likely to interact with the robot, though many observe it with curiosity. The paper contributes to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) theory and suggests further long-term and also quantitative studies to enhance understanding of trust and social-emotional reactions in real-world contexts.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to empirically investigate what aspects of service robot interactions with customers can lead to meaningful outcomes in the view of customers. The study examines functional and emotional elements of AI service robots in terms of meaningful outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis study highlights AI service robots' meaningful outcomes as a viable research problem and proposes a research model utilizing the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework. As an empirical approach, 260 datasets were collected from customers who have experience with AI service restaurants in China.FindingsThe study examines the functional and emotional elements of AI-powered service robots on the attitude of and meaningful outcomes for customers. The results showed that the emotional (perceived friendliness and perceived coolness) and functional (perceived safety and robot competence) attributes of human–robot interactions (HRI) significantly affect the attitude toward using service robots. Second, the attitude toward using service robots significantly influences the experiential outcome and instrumental outcome of meaningful engagement.Research limitations/implicationsThis study highlights two elements (i.e. functional and emotional) of HRI effectiveness using two metrics: experiential and performance outcomes. Future studies should generalize the research findings of service robots in the current study using a larger quantity of data from various service fields.Originality/valueAs the first empirical study highlighting the customer experience with service robots, this study opens up a feasible research direction for the service industry to pursue in terms of conducting HRI studies from the view of customers. It identifies a research model pursuant to customers' experience with HRI in creating meaningful outcomes and it theoretically extends the SOR model to the hospitality study, focusing on the HRI issue.

This study aims to determine the mediating role of customer satisfaction in the relationship between customer trust and customer experience on customer loyalty in Grab transportation in Pekanbaru. The variables of this study include customer trust, customer experience, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. This research was conducted in Pekanbaru City. Data were collected through a questionnaire method which was filled independently of 400 respondents using the census / questionnaire method then analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the help of SPSS 26.0 and Smart PLS 3.2.9. The results of the analysis prove (1) Customer Trust has a positive and significant effect on Customer Satisfaction, (2) Customer Experience has a positive and significant effect on Customer Satisfaction, (3) Customer Satisfaction has a positive and significant effect on Customer Loyalty, (4) Customer Trust has no effect and not significant to Customer Loyalty, (5) Customer Experience has a positive and significant effect on Customer Loyalty, (6) Customer Trust has a positive and significant effect on Customer Loyalty through the Customer Satisfaction variable, (7) Customer Experience has a positive and significant effect on Customer Loyalty through variables Customer satisfaction.

In the design of service robots, a key research focus has been on Human Robot Interaction (HRI) required in service applications. HRI is one of the critical factors that determines the acceptability of a service robot. The user acceptance of a service robot and its applications is highly related to HRI, as HRI affects the user perception and user experience related to the robot. In this paper, a new design approach is proposed for designing and implementing HRI for service robot applications designed for real scenarios in the real-world environment. The objective of this design approach is to facilitate inter-disciplinary collaborations, which are essential for HRI research and for developing successful products. The proposed design approach was used in the design of the healthcare service robot “Cafero” developed at the University of Auckland in collaboration with the Electronic and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI) and Yujin Robot Company Ltd. of Korea. Vital signs measurement, medication management, entertainment and falls detection were implemented as service applications of Cafero. In the design process, UML and UMLi modelling diagrams were used to model the robot’s multi-modal and interactive behaviour. Interaction design patterns were defined to represent recurring interactions or social cues in HRI using UMLi notations. The proposed design approach emphasises an iterative process to allow discovery of additional HRI requirements in the early design stage and to implement through Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE). The design of communication initiation and user identification by Cafero is presented as a case study, in order to evaluate the proposed design approach. In this case study, enabling a service robot to act proactively to the presence of a potential user and identifying the user prior to providing healthcare services is presented. For the implementation, Open-RTM component-oriented framework was used.

Customer loyalty is an important indicator of retail business sustainability, which is influenced by various factors, including customer experience, service quality, and brand image. This study aims to analyze the effect of customer experience and service quality on customer loyalty, with brand image as a mediating variable among customers of MM. Rabil Store. The research data were obtained through questionnaires distributed to 72 respondents and were then analyzed using the partial test (t-test). The results showed that brand image did not have a significant effect on customer loyalty. In contrast, service quality had a significant effect on brand image, but did not have a significant direct effect on customer loyalty. Customer experience was proven to have a significant effect on brand image and customer loyalty. In addition, brand image was not able to mediate the effect of either service quality or customer experience on customer loyalty. These findings indicate that customer loyalty at MM. Rabil Store is more directly influenced by customer experience, while service quality contributes more to the formation of brand image. Thus, this study emphasizes the importance of strengthening customer experience as the main strategy for increasing customer loyalty.

Background: The increasing popularity of online food delivery (OFD) services has prompted many restaurants, including Mie Gacoan, to adopt these platforms. However, in practice, Mie Gacoan frequently encounters customer complaints regarding order discrepancies when placing orders through various OFD platforms.Purpose: This study aims to analyze the factors contributing to customer complaints by examining customer experience and customer satisfaction, particularly in minimizing order discrepancies in online food delivery services. By understanding these factors, Mie Gacoan can enhance customer loyalty while maintaining a positive brand image on the OFD platforms it utilizes.Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a non-probability voluntary sampling method, successfully gathering data from 173 qualified respondents to ensure validity. A descriptive analysis and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) approach are used to test the hypotheses, allowing for the evaluation of multiple relationships among the variables within the research model.Findings/Result: The findings indicate that customer experience and e-service quality significantly influence customer satisfaction, which in turn impacts customer loyalty. The study emphasizes that strengthening customer loyalty requires first enhancing customer satisfaction by improving problem-solving mechanisms within the customer experience and refining compensation policies in e-service quality.Conclusion: The results highlight that customer satisfaction plays a crucial mediating role in fostering customer loyalty, as customer experience and e-service quality exert a stronger influence on satisfaction than on loyalty.Originality/value (State of the art): This study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical insights into the role of customer experience and e-service quality in shaping customer satisfaction and loyalty in the online food delivery sector. The findings offer practical recommendations for service providers to improve their operational strategies and enhance customer retention. Keywords: customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, e-service quality, online food delivery

This study aims to study the effect of customer experience and value on customer loyalty and satisfaction in B2B industry which researchers limitedly discussed. The organization needs to implement customer experience management to create value for customers' purchase intention and win the market competition. One essential key to maintaining customer loyalty is good customer experience management. The elements of customer experience management consist of customer experience, customer value, and purchase intention. The research is cross-sectional quantitative research. An online survey using Google Form was carried out using the purposive sampling technique in 2021 and obtained 85 valid respondents who are corporate customers of a food and beverage manufacturing company located in Tangerang. Respondents were asked 23 closed ended on five scales Likert: strongly disagree to strongly agree. Data were analyzed using PLS-SEM (Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Model. The result shows that customer experience significantly affects customer value, loyalty, and satisfaction. Customer value significantly affects customer loyalty but is not significant to customer satisfaction. 
 Customer experience involves the customer's response to the customer's journey. However, the nature of customer experience is quite complicated; therefore, measurement of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is used more often. Customer value is related to the company’s product excellence, which has a long-term effect resulting in customer loyalty. Therefore, organizations need to focus on building customer experience management and long-term customer value.

The research aims examine and analyze the effect of perceived value, service quality, customer experience on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, the research also examine and analyze effect of perceived value, service quality, customer experience on customer loyalty by mediate of customer satisfaction. This type of research is explanatory research while collecting primary data through distribution of questionnaires to customer in Giant Supermarket Sawojajar Malang as many as 120 customers. Sampling technique used is purposive sampling. In this case, the independent variable are perceived value, service quality, customer experience, as well as intervening variable is customer satisfaction. while dependent variable is customer loyalty. The data has been collected then analysed by using analysis of PLS (Partial Least Square). The result obtained are perceived value has effect on customer satisfaction, service quality has effect on customer satisfaction, customer experience has effect on customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction has effect on customer satisfaction, perceived value has effect on customer loyalty, service quality has effect on customer loyalty, customer experience has effect on customer loyalty, perceived value has effect on customer loyalty by mediate of customer satisfaction, service quality has effect on customer loyalty by mediate of customer satisfaction, customer experience has no effect on customer loyalty by mediate of customer satisfaction DOI : https://doi.org/10.26905/jbm.v4i2.1694

The purposes of this study are to explore the principles and rules of human-service robot division and interaction when introducing service robots into the catering service industry. Focus group interview and in-depth expert interview were conducted. The results indicated that the participants had high acceptance of importing service robot into catering service. They feel the service robots are somewhat novel and attractively. From the perspective of task orientation, the participants think that the service robots could be introduced to all of the catering service process in the future. However, they also hoped that the human and robots can cooperate and work together in the processes. They hope to have more interaction with robots. They are delight to see the service robot can bring customers different feelings and experience. They don't want to face a standard and ice-cold robot. The participants hope that the service robots have a wide variety of external appearance to meet the style of restaurants. They also anticipate the robot can act various body movements and facial expression. Immediate assistance to customers and service workers are expected. Incorrect message transmission can be tolerant by the customers, however, exact communication with service personnel is considered to be very important. The service workers have willing to work together with service robots and hope the high-risk and heavy work can be done by service robots to reduce accidents and improve the reliability and safety. The feeling of safety and more affect feeling is needed for the customers. Besides, the participants are more concerned about the value that service robots can generate. Cost down of human resources and reduced workload was expected especially. Application of service robots does not necessarily imply that manual and cognitive tasks will be replaced by machines. It is essential to serve and observe the emotional needs of customers and service workers. High-skilled workers may become more productive as they become co-workers of machines and both complement each other even at the same level of value creation. Therefore, thinking about how to cooperate and work together for the workers and service robot while introducing service robot into catering service is an important topic. The customers and service workers are looking forward to get along with an interactive, emotional, and reliable service robot.

Luxury retailers are increasingly considering the introduction of service robots in their stores to enhance the value proposition and reshape the dynamics of both the service encounter and the customer experience. Although the literature recognizes the social presence of robots in service encounters, little empirical research compares humans and service robots related to luxury. In addition, further research is needed to investigate the emotional responses of young customers, like Generation Z, to a technology-infused servicescape and to explore the value of service robots as a social presence in luxury stores. A 2×2 mixed methods experimental design was developed to test the research hypotheses. The study was conducted in a laboratory with 116 participants randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: approaching vs. non-approaching behavior with a service robot or a human sales assistant. Self-reports and neurophysiological responses (skin conductance) were collected to measure their responses during the service encounter. The results show that a human or a service robot approaching the customer can lead to greater positive affective states and emotional responses than a human or a service robot not approaching. In addition, we found that young customers do not differentiate between human sales assistants and service robots. However, the customers’ level of immersion in the flow, understanding of the message, and happiness are higher with a human sales assistant. Finally, the absence of any interaction (non-approaching) during the service encounter leads to a negative reaction to a human sales assistant compared to a service robot, showing the importance of personalized and deep connections in luxury service.

This study investigates the impact of e-service quality, such as reliability, responsiveness, assurance, perceived risk, enjoyment, and speed of service, on customer experience and satisfaction at selected quick-service restaurants that use service robots. Respondents of the study were 181 patrons/diners at selected quick-service food establishments using automation and robots in their operations. Spearman rho, weighted mean, and frequency and percentage data analysis were employed. The study's findings revealed that customers find the usage of service robots and automation reliable, with a 4.56 mean score and the speed of service (4.45) as the two highest E-SERVQUAL dimensions. The study reveals that the six ESERVQUAL dimensions strongly correlate with customer experience and satisfaction. The same conclusion was revealed regarding a strong positive relationship between customer experience and satisfaction. Thus, the association has a unidirectional relationship. Customers reported higher satisfaction levels when services were prompt, responsive, accurate, and risk-free, and the overall experience was enjoyable. The study adds to the theoretical enrichment of the literature about the impact of e-service quality on customer experience and satisfaction in the context of restaurants in the Philippines. Future research directions may use AI and service robots in people management strategies in the hospitality sector.

Human robot interaction (HRI) is core to the design of service robots. The interaction during a service application determines how a user perceives the robot, which affects the user's experience and how well the user accepts the robot and its services. During the last decade, robotics service applications in close proximity to human users have been a popular research area. Research in related fields such as computer vision has also made significant advances to make available many interaction algorithms for HRI. However, we argue that there is only minimum utilization of these algorithms in the construction of HRI needed in actual service robots, despite their availability. This is partly because these algorithms have inherent limitations and only solve some of the HRI issues required in a complete service scenario in real environments. In this paper, a new general design approach is proposed to utilize modeling languages UML and UMLi to describe a service scenario and model the HRI required in a complete service. These models can be further used to elicit sometimes hidden HRI requirements from limitations in the interaction algorithms used. This approach helps multidisciplinary research to make HRI design decisions early at the design stage and guide implementation by software engineers. A user identification service scenario was designed, implemented and used as the case study of this design approach. It was integrated with a medication reminder application on a robot which was deployed and evaluated with the older people in a retirement village in New Zealand.

PurposeRetailers are increasingly considering the introduction of service robots in their stores to support or even replace service staff. Service robots can execute service scripts during the service encounter that can influence customer interactions and the overall experience. While the role of service agents is well documented, more research is needed to understand customer responses to a technology-infused servicescape and to investigate the value of service robots as interaction partners. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of customer immersion in human-human or human-robot interactions across different stages of the service experience and to understand how immersion affects store visit duration under each condition.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental field study was developed to test the research hypotheses. The study was conducted in a retail store selling premium Italian leather goods with 50 respondents randomly allocated to one of two experimental conditions, interaction with a service robot or interaction with a human sales associate. Participants’ biometrics were collected to measure their immersion in the service encounter and to assess its impact on store visit duration.FindingsThe interaction with a service robot increases the level of customer immersion during the service encounter’s welcome and surprise moments. Immersion positively affects visit duration. However, participants exposed to a robot sales associate reported a shorter visit duration as compared to those who interacted with a human sales associate.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the emerging service and retail marketing literature on service robot applications applying a neuroscientific approach to the study of human–robot interactions across different moments of the service encounter. For managers, this study shows the conditions under which service robots can be successfully implemented in retail stores in accordance with the type of task performed and the degree of immersion generated in customers.

This study aims to analyze the role of Service Quality, System Quality, and Customer Experience on Customer Loyalty in Digital Banking, with Customer Satisfaction as an intervening variable. This study focuses on digital bank users in Jakart a. A quantitative approach with a survey method was used. The analysis technique employed was Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test the relationships among the studied variables. The sample size used in this study was 110 respondents. The findings show that Service Quality (X1) influences Customer Satisfaction (Z), but does not affect Loyalty (Y). Customer Satisfaction (Z) does not influence Loyalty (Y). System Quality (X2) does not affect Customer Satisfaction (Z). Customer Experience (X3) affects Customer Satisfaction (Z) and Customer Loyalty (Y). However, Service Quality (X1) through Customer Satisfaction (Z) does not impact Loyalty (Y). Similarly, System Quality (X2) through Customer Satisfaction (Z) does not affect Loyalty (Y), and Customer Experience (X3) through Customer Satisfaction (Z) does not influence Loyalty (Y).