Service robots have been gradually adopted by various providers. However, despite their significant potential in various service scenarios, robots can make mistakes during service interactions. Drawing on the concept of customer empowerment (CE), this study contributes to the existing literature by comparing the difference in the empowerment perceptions of younger and older customers toward robots and human employees. This study further examined empowerment strategies among two adult age groups in the context of robot service recovery and provided empirical evidence regarding the role of CE in service remediation. The results of the first experimental study revealed that older customers felt less empowered when encountering robot service failures than human service failures. The results from the follow-up two experiments indicate that the “wooden barrel effect” exists for effective recovery strategies to achieve empowerment perception and then, post-recovery customer satisfaction; that is, empowerment recovery strategies might succeed only when both information-sharing and compensation options are provided. These findings provide evidence-based guidance for policymakers and service providers in executing robot service recovery.

中文翻译：

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赋能需要两个：在机器人服务失败的情况下，客户对赋权恢复的反应

服务机器人已逐渐被各提供商采用。然而，尽管机器人在各种服务场景中具有巨大潜力，但在服务交互过程中也可能会犯错误。本研究借鉴客户赋权（CE）的概念，通过比较年轻和年长客户对机器人和人类员工的赋权认知差异，为现有文献做出了贡献。本研究进一步研究了机器人服务恢复背景下两个成年人年龄组的赋权策略，并提供了关于 CE 在服务补救中的作用的经验证据。第一项实验研究的结果表明，与人类服务失败相比，老年客户在遇到机器人服务失败时感到的权力较小。后续两个实验的结果表明，有效的恢复策略存在“木桶效应”，以实现赋权感知，进而实现恢复后的客户满意度；也就是说，只有提供信息共享和补偿方案，赋权恢复战略才有可能取得成功。这些发现为政策制定者和服务提供商执行机器人服务恢复提供了基于证据的指导。