Rise of the robots: Bank deploys ‘Pepper’ to assist customers
Rise of the robots: Bank deploys ‘Pepper’ to assist
customers
By RON HURTIBISE MAY 29, 2019 | 7:59 AM
Don’t be afraid, but a robot is being deployed to serve
you at one of the world’s largest banks.
Its name is Pepper. It’s a humanoid robot with a tablet
for a chest and wheels that let it get around on its own. It’s shiny and cute.
It has arms and it has hands that it can tighten into a fist.
But it doesn’t want to hurt you or take anyone’s job, say
officials of HSBC Bank, where Pepper is being put to work.
Beginning Thursday, Pepper will greet customers at HSBC
Bank’s Brickell branch in Miami, and later, possibly other locations throughout
Florida, according to bank officials. Pepper’s Miami launch will be the fourth
for the bank, following launches at branches on Fifth Avenue in New York City
last summer, and in Seattle and Beverly Hills this past spring.
Remember how some banks in the 1970s introduced “Tillie
the All Time Teller” by putting a colorful human face on the cold steel ATM
machines they wanted us to use to get cash or deposit checks? This is kind of
like that, except when it’s not, says Kass Dawson, head of marketing and
business strategy at SoftBank Robotics America, Pepper’s inventor and
manufacturer.
Pepper’s job is to bring you information about basic
services offered by the bank, so the bank’s human employees will have more time
for “deeper, more high-value customer engagements,” a bank official said in a
recent news release.
Pepper is friendly and social, says Jeremy Balkin, head
of Innovation at HSBC Bank USA. It can show customers “how-to” videos on its
tablet. It can teach customers how to use the bank’s ATM machine or download
its smartphone app. It can send links to your device to help you apply for a
credit card or open an account.
By contrast, all Tillie was asked to do was beckon bank
customers to use ATMs for the first time, Dawson said. Ultimately, “Tillie was
flawed because [banks] had to hire people to stand next to it and teach people
how to use it,” he added.
Dawson said HSBC expects to introduce more Peppers in the
U.S. and beyond, including other Florida branches. Far from replacing human
workers, its presence in the New York branch helped boost business by 60% and
prompted the bank to hire more workers, Balkin said.
SoftBank has deployed more than 15,000 Peppers across the
globe since 2014, mostly to Asia — where they can be found in retail stores,
restaurants, schools and banks — and Europe, where, among other functions, they
greet visitors at museums, libraries and auto dealerships, Dawson said.
So far in the U.S., more than 250 of the robots have been
introduced, including to companies that aren’t ready to be identified, Dawson
said. While some hotels have deployed them, SoftBank is narrowing its marketing
focus to retail and retail banking uses, Dawson said. The company makes a
separate robot, NAO, for use in schools.
Dawson stressed that the company’s robots are built to
provide information, not perform physical labor like stocking shelves or
folding clothes. And sorry, Pepper can’t bring you a cold drink. And that’s
good for human workers.
“We want automation that assists the workforce, not
replaces it,” Dawson said.
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