Towards a New Service Reality - Human-Robot Collaboration at the Service Frontline

The digital service revolution will significantly change the way we do business. A big part of this revolution are service robots in various forms and shapes. In this article, we illustrate the implication of service robots for the service industry. We compare service robots with traditional self-service technologies as well as human service personnel and identify opportunities and challenges. In the Service Robot Deployment Model (SRD Model), we highlight promising areas for human-robot collaboration and derive managerial implications for the service frontline in this new reality with service robots