CES Showcases Robots (Again) And Demonstrates How They Can Provide Amazing Customer Service

You check into a hotel. You get into your room and call the front desk to ask for some extra towels to be sent up. Several minutes later, your phone rings and you are told there is a delivery outside your door. You open the door, but you don’t see a hotel employee. Instead, you see a robot … with your towels.

This isn’t a scene from a science fiction movie. This is real life at the Renaissance Hotel in Las Vegas. The hotel has two robots, Elvis and Priscilla, manufactured by Savioke, a company based in San Jose, California.

Just last week, across the street from the Renaissance Hotel, the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and, as usual, robots were a big attraction. This year, however, stands out for those in the customer service world. Just as AI and chatbots are becoming mainstream in helping customers get answers to their questions, companies like Savioke are hoping that robots become an integral part of the customer service experience.

One of the more interesting stories comes from LG Electronics, theSouth Korean company known for its TVs. The company was at CES, showcasing robots for three different markets. According to the LG press release, the robots, named CLOi (pronounced like the name Chloe), will work in hotels, airports, and supermarkets.

The CLOi serving robot will deliver food and beverages to guests in hotels and airport lounges. The CLOi porter robot helps hotel guests with express check-in and check-out. It can also deliver luggage. And, you’ll find a CLOi shopping cart in supermarkets. Using an app on your phone, it can sync with your grocery list and guide you through the store. It also has a barcode reader that customers can use to scan items for prices as they are placed in the robot’s bin.

Ryu Hye-Jung, head of the smart solution business division for LG’s Home Appliance and Air Solutions, says, “As an important part of our future growth engine, LG is committed to expanding its portfolio of robots that can deliver real convenience and innovation in our customers’ lives.”

It was the mid-1970s when robots started to become commonplace in factories. Many of our cars are at least partially assembled in robot-powered factories. Now, it’s moving from manufacturing to service industries, and over into lifestyle.

We haven’t quite yet seen a “tipping point”, where robots are a fabric of our daily lives. It’s still intriguing and somewhat of an anomaly to see a distant cousin of Star Wars’ C-3PO delivering a drink to a guest at a bar, or toting luggage to a room at a hotel. But, that doesn’t mean we aren’t experiencing automation or artificial intelligence (AI) in some form every day of our lives.

AI and chatbots have become commonplace ways of interacting with a company’s website to get customer support. Sometimes, the chatbots are so good that you don’t know if you are dealing with a human or a computer.

iRobot is a leading global consumer robot company that, according to its website, “designs and builds robots that empower people to do more both inside and outside the house.” It has been around since 1990 when three roboticists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a vision of robots being part of our daily lives. In 2002, they introduced Roomba, a small robot that can vacuum a home, which since then has been growing in popularity and capability.

Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home are finding their way into households and offices. People are very comfortable asking these devices to turn on the TV, order a pizza or play a favorite music playlist.

Every time Outlook or Gmail automatically moves an email from the inbox to the spam folder, we’re experiencing a form of AI.

And in the very near future, by 2020, we’ll see driverless cars go from concept to reality.

All of this leads to more productivity at work, more leisure time at home, and a lifestyle that was portrayed in cartoons like the Jetsons back in the 1960s. And the outcome – or at least the goal – is that life will be better.

Will it be better? Is all of this good? Is it bad? It’s not for me to decide. It’s just the way it is. You can fight it or embrace it. AI, robots, driverless cars… Oh, my!

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, keynote speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Follow Shep on Twitter: @Hyken.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.