Robots have the potential to improve working conditions, especially in industries like hospitality, where recruiting and retaining staff has become a growing challenge. As hotels, restaurants, and tourism businesses seek to stay competitive, providing a supportive, modern work environment is essential. One promising solution is the integration of social robots to support the staff interacting with guests daily and often face high emotional demands.
But how does working alongside a robot affect them? Can robots ease emotional labor or add to it? And what does this mean for customer experience? To answer these questions, researchers are taking a closer look at the dynamic between employees, customers, and AI robots, aiming to identify both the opportunities and challenges this technology brings.
This project is being conducted by the School of Business and Economics at Karlstad University in Sweden, known for its strong industry connections and applied, socially relevant research. With a multidisciplinary team, this School is one of the leading hubs researching how technology transforms organizations and everyday life.
Karlstad University is home to the Service Research Center (CTF), one of Europe’s leading environments for studying service innovation, digitalization, and customer experience. Researchers at CTF explore how businesses evolve through service-oriented thinking, including areas like AI integration, user-centered innovation, and sustainable development.
To simulate real-world scenarios, researchers are using the Furhat robot. Furhat helps create realistic situations in which employees interact with both customers and AI, while researchers measure emotional and stress responses using specialized tools.
These simulations are part of a broader data collection effort, helping the team understand how AI affects both workers and the customer experience. In parallel, the researchers are holding workshops with hospitality companies, employee and employer representatives to discuss possible and desirable futures where AI plays a meaningful role in the workplace.
By co-developing future scenarios and strategies, the project aims to offer practical guidance for companies considering the integration of AI, ensuring that technological progress leads to better work environments, not just automation.
