Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

I was not exaggerating in my previous article when I discussed how " machines are now replacing humans in service jobs ."  If it is still difficult to convince you, here is an additional example: " Meet Sally, the robot who makes perfect salads ."  This machine specializes in only one menu item — salad  — y et it can do a better job than most chefs. For example: It  can make salads within 60 seconds. It makes salad with perfect proportions, even with accurate calorie counts. It can create more than 1,000 salads from the 21 ingredients stored inside the machine. Those 21 ingredients can be changed over time, making it possible for the machine to create even more salads. It weighs 350 pounds. It has a  price tag of $30,000, but can also be leased for $500 a month. "What? A machine that costs over $10,000? That is too expensive, especially when we consider the high maintenance fees associated with the machines. There is no way that restaurants would us...

I am not joking. Machine serving people has now become the new reality, as I suggested in my recent discussion on Multibriefs.com  . Here are just some examples: A restaurant with no hosts, no waiters, and no tables Burger-flipping robots Robot baristas   Robot that makes salads Self-ordering service - Domino's Pizza, McDonald's, Starbucks , and Wendy's .  Food delivery robots The robotic butler service in hotels The automatic drink dispenser Personal assistants Self-driving cars Does it become obvious that the new era of machines serving people has already arrived?  I think it is now the time for those who are feeling the panic of being replaced by machines or robots at work to reconsider their career paths.  Manual labor will certainly be replaced, and the only  way for us to survive in this competition is to become  the leaders in the field .

What can managers do to shut down bad online reviews? Here is a real example:  It started at the Broadway Oyster Bar in St. Louis this February when Mary S., a Yelper, left the business with a one-star rating and a description of the negative experience she received in the restaurant. As a reference, the restaurant is now being monitored by Yelp for any content related to media reports, meaning some reviews have been or would be removed from the business's page on Yelp, but the restaurant has an overall 4.4 star rating from more than 900 Yelpers in March. Mary went there for a birthday dinner. She claimed that she had a reservation for a party of nine people, but the party waited for two hours before they were finally seated. To make it even worse, because there were three additional people joining the party and the manager was unwilling to work with them, they would have to wait for longer to be seated together or be split up. She then took the group of 12 people with her t...

"A second chance is all hoteliers need to get back in the game." By saying that, I am referring that the staggering numbers hotel websites get from the horrors of booking abandonment, which can be better understood as "cart abandonment." There could be various reasons why guests decide to leave a hotel website during the booking process. For example, a consumer may feel unnecessary to continue browsing in the hopes for a better price later; or the hotel website lacks the information that the customer is looking for. If your hotel has ever experienced book abandonment by consumers, remember that a second chance does exist! That is, with the help of 'retargeting'. Why and where is the abandonment? No business wants to be abandoned, especially when it was over something as small as a payment issue on the website. It has been found that about 81% of guests desert the travel booking with the following reasons:  39% - Browsing around and wanting a wider v...