Slurping Ramen with Robots
I was surprised as (I would hope) most people when I read that SoftBank was leveraging AI to reduce the anger in customer voices when speaking with customer service representatives. This is part of the larger story in Japan for managing their customer service industry (e.g., such as the government's recent move to regulate against such kasuhara, or customer harassment). However, this "emotion-canceling" technology would not only anaesthetize the conversations (anger often has value in understanding customer complaints) but could, if picked up by other larger players, represent yet another hurdle toward engaging, on a human level, with customers.
My own recent experience merging both Softbank and customer engagement was during my recent trip to Japan, as I meandered around the busy, kaleidoscopic streets of Shibuya. I stumbled upon Tokyo Plaza Shibuya, a sleekly-designed shopping mall not unlike other major stops in Tokyo.
It was a long day and I felt satisfied in sights seen, but passing three robots in the entrance to the mall and a child running around each as they danced and responded to his noises was too much to pass. As designed, I was hooked and wanted to learn more. It was then that I saw these three robots were the ushers for passersby to come up and check out the restaurant, Pepper Parlor（ペッパーパーラー). I actually had dinner about an hour before and was the opposite the hungry. Still, worth checking out, I thought, and up I went.
My first impression, I should say, was that it was kinda creepy. Each table had a robot, standing around 4 feet tall. There was a stage with five robots against a backdrop of various colors. On closer look, the light around the eyes would flicker, giving the quite real feeling of blinking. I lingered first around the perimeter of the restaurant, taking pictures with my phone. As I entered the feeling of this place's originality—if not prescience for how restaurants will look and feel a decade from now—was overpowering. I grabbed a seat.
As I did, a dish-carrying robot passed me. I had seen these before, in Florida actually. For a half second, I was hoping it would recognize me, perhaps through a shared collective intelligence among dish-carrying robots. But it didn’t and simply sped back to the kitchen with the word ‘home’ in English, printed on its screen. I then turned my entire attention to the robot for my table, which reminded me of the robot from the recent Apple+ TV show, Sunny (which, maybe not so ironically, took place in a near-futuristic Japan).
So, for purposes of my experience, let’s call my robot: Sunny.
There was an ipad on Sunny’s chest, with four options written in Japanese: conversation, game, music and to change the language. I went with the first option, opting to try out my Japanese.
Just then a waiter—a human!—came by and asked me what I wanted. I thought this would have been an obvious use case for the robot—ask me what my order is, answer questions maybe that I had (e.g., is what I want spicy? I’m allergic to peanuts, is that a problem?, etc.).
“I’d like the Shoyu Ramen”, I told the human. He nodded, left, and began to ring my order on a computer a few feet away, leaving me and Sunny to get to know one another.
Domo Arigatou, Mr. Roboto, but…
Thinking over my ramen, I realized this was not a serious attempt to capture the future. Yes, it had the LLM experience of conversing with what was becoming table stakes for chatbots nowadays. Ok. It had pre-programed songs and games it could play. It was definitely a step up from the ipads left at tables of family restaurants to keep the kids distracted while the food arrived. But in all its wizard-of-oz theatrics, it was more a toy—which was depressing, considering what an actual robot, designed with the use case of restaurants in tourist areas, should be like.
A far better application would include, at minimum, the following:
Sign-in capability (not unlike Amazon Go with an app, QR code, or better some biometric capability) when entering so the restaurant can know who you are (and preferences like choice of seating, favorite dishes, allergies, etc.).
Greeting from the robot that takes you to your seat (so that, like Cheers, there's the feeling that everyone knows your name).
Personalized drink and entree recommendations from Sunny (restaurants can combine the person's food preferences with food the restaurant is trying to sell to optimize food inventory)--Sunny, of course, would be a sommelier (we already see examples of this today, like Sommify).
Sunny can answer any nutrition-related questions (number of calories compared with the food tracking app the customer may be using or optimized to the customer's stated nutrition goals).
The order can be taken and paid for using additional biometric information (e.g., facial or voice analysis as sign-in) for payment (as a second layer for the info provided when the customer first entered the restaurant).
While waiting for the food, Sunny can then provide a more personalized entertainment.
During / following the meal, Sunny can then request and collect feedback ("the fries were terrific but the hamburger wasn't as cooked as I would like. The salad was just so-so. I like restaurant decor as well. Parking was really difficult though").
Need a taxi? Sunny would order it so it will arrive when the meal is finished.
All of this technology exists today. All it would take is for a company like Softbank to bring it all together!
Where do we go now?
We’re years away from general artificial intelligence - which is still frightening! (FYI: interesting article on AI agents and AGI here), and the nonlinear nature of technological developments may bring surprises that can disrupt or even disentangle the fabric of society.
Until then, customers will still struggle with getting the everyday tasks of their buying and selling. Not on everything; and, yes, increasingly less so day by day.
At Teleperson, we see our purpose as helping shepherd a world of effortless service, grappling with the implications of poor design of customer service as we find it today. We're definitely inspired by restaurants like Pepper Parlour--if anything to help us understand and address where we can the gaps in providing seamless, personalized, and highly memorable experiences for customers everywhere.
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