The Customer Service Robot Market Is Set to Explode

The customer service robot market is off to a healthy start, with worldwide revenue of $53.77 million in 2016, according to research firm Tractica. The company expects the market to reach $87.97 million by the end of 2022.

The growth comes as many prominent companies and investors finally start to show confidence in robots and customer interaction technology.Understanding the tremendous opportunity in the service sector, companies—especially those in the retail, travel and hospitality, financial services, and healthcare sectors—are moving forward from the research and development stage.

Tractica found that a lot of money is being spent by companies to attract new customers and retain existing ones through various means, such as interactive marketing, which it says has just begun to evolve from traditional methods to highly sophisticated technology-based methods that give marketers key reference points by analyzing and predicting customer behavior. Herein lies a significant opportunity for customer service robots that have the advantages of speed and extraordinary data processing capabilities and can work tirelessly without taking a break, it said.

A robotic workforce can increase efficiency in banks, shopping malls, family entertainment centers, exhibitions and events, airports, stores, and many other places where customer interactions are standardized and repetitive in nature.

The technologies involved include the following:

• Human-robot interaction;
• Navigation autonomy;
• Spatial awareness;
• Machine vision;
• Voice and speech recognition;
• Artificial intelligence;
• Machine learning;
• Gesture control;
• Tactile sensors;
• Wi-Fi; and
• Bluetooth.

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