Edinburgh Napier University

  Organizations are progressively using service robots in frontline settings to enhance consumer experiences as we see an increasing trend in humans and robots working together in restaurants, airports, and banks. In this research, we examine the impact of tasks deployed to humanoid frontline service robots (FLSR) on frontline employees’ (FLEs) job satisfaction and their feeling of being replaced. Through five experiments and a survey, this research shows that FLEs experience reduced job satisfaction when FLSRs performs tasks that primarily require empathetic intelligence (EI) than the tasks that primarily require mechanical intelligence (MI). This is because the perceived humanness of EI tasks is higher than that of MI tasks. We also found that the relationship between tasks deployed to FLSR and FLE job satisfaction depends upon the industry type and the meaningfulness of tasks that FLE is performing. We also found the negative effect of the task deployed to FLSR on customer outcomes and provide guidelines for managers.