Bill Kerr: Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Bill Kerr. This episode is one of a series of special dispatches on the sweeping effect that Covid-19 is having on society, the economy, and the future of work. In addition to our regular podcast episodes, we’ll be bringing you interviews with business leaders, policy makers, and leading scholars on the coronavirus.

Robots could be one of the more visible signs of change in a post-Covid-19 society. Automation is likely to increase across the board. We can expect to see more robots handling cleanup, service tasks, and health care chores. They’re also poised to play a greater role in retail, greeting and serving customers. Sometimes seen as engineering curiosities, or as threats to human employment, the coronavirus is transforming robots into a more central feature of work. SoftBank Robotics offers robots ranging from automated sweepers to humanoid helper robots. Kass Dawson, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing Communications, joins us to describe the robotics component of this new normal. What is essential about robots right now? What’s on the horizon, and what are the hurdles to widespread adoption? Let’s find out. Welcome, Kass.

Kass Dawson: Hey, Bill. Thank you. It’s good to be here, and thank you everyone for listening.

Kerr: Kass, tell us a little about your background and how you came to SoftBank.

Dawson: So my background, I’ve been a career-long marketer. I started out marketing for sizable brands like Mercedes-Benz as well as Facebook, and have taken my skill set into the world of SoftBank Robotics. That started when a former colleague of mine from Facebook started the office of SoftBank Robotics, which is a global company, here in the US and asked me to come join him and help the team in some of their go-to-market efforts.

Kerr: Kass, the pandemic has focused attention on automated cleaning systems like Whiz, which is one of your marque products. Tell us about Whiz, where’s it being used, and how has that been changing since the Covid outbreak?

Dawson: Thank you for the question. We’ve launched Whiz here in the US last November at a big cleaning convention called ISSA in Las Vegas. And since then, we’ve been talking to industries, the cleaning industry, but you think about more specifically hospitality, elderly care, health care, some food services, and retail. We’re talking across the board. I think, as we’ve all seen, when March hit and the outbreak took control, lots of businesses took a big hit, and things got paused. And what was interesting for us in the world of automation was that, as people needed clean and people needed to protect their staff or their employees or the inhabitants of their space, they realized quickly the benefit that an autonomous vacuum sweeper could provide. What it is doing is, it’s allowing for the cleaning staff to focus on some of those higher-fidelity tasks—like disinfecting, cleaning surfaces, tables, door knobs, handles, buttons on elevators, et cetera—so that they don’t have to spend the time vacuuming, which is really the premise of automation, generally speaking. Again, for us, our purpose at SoftBank Robotics is we want to augment humanity through automation. And so what we’ve put in place is “cobots” that will work alongside staff and help them focus on the more important tasks. And right now there is no more important task than cleaning spaces, as we all try to migrate through this Covid pandemic.

Kerr: Yeah, it sounds like Whiz is offering both support for them—the employee that’s doing the cleaning. It also has some visibility for customers. So tell us a little bit about what the full value proposition is for your clients?

Dawson: Got it. That’s a great question. I think what’s interesting is, when we started this, a lot of our clients were looking at ... they do cleaning at nighttime. And so the intent of that is to not get in anybody’s way and not have people see what’s going on behind the wizard’s curtain, if you will. With this pandemic, I think, we’re seeing a shift in the way people look at the cleaning industry, which is one of the largest industries in the world. So funny enough, as one of the larger industries, they’re being impacted so heavily that they now have to prove the cleaning that they’re doing. And people want to see, and the only way to really be able to prove that something is being cleaned is to see it. I think in the past, I’ve talked about, the cleaning industry has gotten away with what is known as “spot cleaning,” which is something where, “If I see dirt there, I’ll clean it. If not, then it must be clean.” Or at least the people coming through the space won’t recognize it as dirty. That is no longer going to be good enough. And so what a robot does is, it is doing what we call “confirmed clean.” So it’s providing the data of the cleaning that it does to prove out what was cleaned so that our clients—or ultimately the people that own or rent the space—can prove to their constituents that the space has been cleaned. The other interesting thing is, people want to see this cleaning going on to believe it. And so now the interesting thing about a robot is people want to see and understand what’s going on. And the robot moving around is proving to consumers or to guests in a space that there is consistent, ongoing cleaning going on.

Kerr: So Kass, often your client in these relationships is a cleaning company that is providing the services to other businesses. And you have a pretty exciting and emerging partnership with Aramark undergoing. So tell us about that.

Dawson: Correct. So as I mentioned earlier, we’ve launched in November to the cleaning industry, which, like a lot of industries, is a little slow to embracing automation because it’s new, unproven. There are some challenges or questions. And it’s not necessarily inexpensive. And so what we’ve had to do from the standpoint of embracing some of those challenges, we’ve changed the pricing model. We’ve gone to a monthly pricing model, as opposed to a flat fee. It’s more of a subscription, if you will, type of model to explain the value, improve that value, out over time, rather than outlying all of your money in the front. Through all of that, we’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the companies or brands out there that are interested in being at the forefront of this reach-out. And Aramark is interestingly one. It’s not just in cleaning, but also in more broadly facilities management. And so they’ve been looking at how automation can help them achieve the goals and objectives that they’ve set for their clients in helping to manage facilities—whether that’s having somebody at the check-in desk, helping to run the food preparation, helping to clean, if you will. And so they’re looking at a more broad automation strategy, because they recognize that, with automation, they’ll be able to help their staff be more effective and, ultimately, drive more value for their customers. So we’re launching with them a pretty sizable tactic across a multiple of their clients. One of the largest will be 80 units deployed at one client and one campus. So we’re really excited about what that means for us and for them, and how we can collectively go out and prove to the world the power and value of automation.

Kerr: One of your obvious clients for these types of cleaning products—or the ultimate client—is going to be retail establishments, and those have been closed for the better part of two to three months in some cases, and are going to be reopening. And there’s various federal, state, and local directives about how businesses can reopen. How much do you have to get into those types of details with your customers? And are they asking for different solutions in one state versus another?

Dawson: So for us, it’s less about what our solution is in those different states, because the solution is vacuuming and saving time so that more cleaning can be done. So we’re proving that we are an essential business throughout this. What we have to do in terms of deployment is understand the nuance of all of those different states. What are the travel restrictions? What are the safety precautions? In certain open states, masks aren’t necessarily required, but we’re sending our staff out with masks and extra masks so that they can provide that to the clients, because we just want to ensure safety for everyone. We also have to be mindful of when people are coming back from deployment. We’ve got a pretty good-sized office in Boston, and that’s where a lot of our deployment team is. And when they travel right now, as the standard is from the state, when they get back, they have to quarantine themselves for 14 days. So we have to be mindful of all of this as we continue to move forward and really work toward protecting our staff, first and foremost, but then also protecting the safety of our clients and their employees as well.

Kerr: Beyond cleaning, what are some of the other use cases that you see Covid-19 either reinforcing or accelerating? Or has it introduced other new use cases in the robotics area?

Dawson: So the other autonomous solutions that I think are going to be prevalent because of coronavirus, there’s some food prep. Anywhere that people don’t want to either touch or interact with things, anywhere that there’s opportunity for contactless service, I think that’s where we’re going to see some of this. So you’re already seeing it, although you don’t physically see it, but in your e-commerce and delivery of goods or services, you’re getting that from the automated warehousing and the tactics that are going on in picking, packing, and delivery of goods. Food prep is another one that I keep referencing. The creation of—whether that be an automated hamburger maker, automated soup or noodle maker, or whatever the case may be, I think there’s going to be a lot of traction there as well. And then, when we talk about cleaning, right now lots of folks are asking beyond just the vacuuming, what are some other cleaning? So looking at some of that disinfectant, can that be automated as well? I think cleaning will be the majority of what is going to benefit from this, from automation in this post- or even existing pandemic world. But you definitely start to see it in all of these other contactless forms, whether it’s the physical robots or you’re dealing with your Uber Eats delivering your food and the option to say “contactless delivery.” I don’t want to actually have to interact with a human being right now because I’m fearful of contamination.

Kerr: Yeah. You can see how the use cases would be driven a lot by that contact feature. Let’s move a little bit to some of the other offerings you have beyond Whiz. And one that many people talk about is Pepper, which is the humanoid robot that’s for customer service. So tell us a little bit about how that’s being used in retail settings, and what’s on the roadmap over the next few years in terms of its evolution.

Dawson: So Pepper is an interesting one. That was our first robot that we launched here in the US, like I said, when I started probably about ... It launched globally a little over five and a half years ago. We launched it here in the US about four years ago. The interesting thing about Pepper is, it’s intended to be a human interaction device. It’s intended to interact and provide information to humans. And so what we’re seeing in this world of places being shut down and everything being done, like we’re doing this—obviously it’s a podcast—but lots of interviews, lots of panels, lots of events have been moved to Zoom. People just are not going out right now. And so what we’re seeing is, Pepper is a great solution for providing those low-level questions or answers to questions or information, in a physical environment. But the physical environment has been shut down for all intents and purposes. And so, as such, we’ve recognized—with a focus on trying to figure out how do we augment humanity—we’ve really focused a lot more of our effort and energy into the Whiz solution, because we have to get these spaces clean and get the environment in a way that people feel comfortable going out and seeing it, before we can actually start tackling what those other solutions might be. So the longer-term roadmap for Pepper right now is, I don’t want to say that it’s on hold, but quite honestly, with a focus on trying to clean and figure out the ways to enhance what Whiz can do, that’s where a lot of our effort and energy is being put right now, because that’s what the world needs—is cleaner spaces, so that we can all live a little bit more free of mind that we’re comfortable and safe in a healthy environment.

Kerr: One of the things that was interesting about Pepper—and recognizing it’s on hold but could also come back—is that some of the studies found that when it had been installed in places like HSBC—the bank—it involved an increase in foot traffic and sales. I don’t know, can you talk to us about how Pepper has worked with retailers in the past and what that role could look like in the next iterations?

Dawson: Sure. So what Pepper was able to do is it is, first of all, I think it’s a unique tool that people want to go and see. They want to figure out, how am I supposed to interact with this? Any robot draws attention, which I think was interesting about people needing to see clean and being able to see a robotic sweeper coming around is still interesting and cool to see and good to know. Because automation is eliminating some of those menial tasks, what you saw with Pepper—and will continue to see at a later date—is you see that there’s a frictionless interaction that is then handed off to the human employee at a certain point. If you think about the times that you have gone into retail and the person, the employee, comes up to you when you first walk in and says, “How may I help you?” And your immediate response is, “No, I’m good. I’m just looking.” There has always been this strange dynamic of not wanting to interact with humans. When you first walk into a new environment, you want to kind of get the feel for yourself. And what we’ve seen with automation and robots is that you take away that initial hesitation, and you provide somebody with the information that they need. And if they do need human interaction, then Pepper does the handoff. And so there was this creation of a safer space to have conversation. I think the use case that was most interesting at HSBC was they were trying to promote credit cards. So as people began interacting with the robot, they started to go down that credit card path. And HSBC started seeing more people interested in credit cards, because—through working with Pepper, through that lack of human perception of judgment or whatever there may have been that was that blocker—people were actually looking. And that’s when business started to step up, was when Pepper was handing off their clients to a teller at a point where that person had already gone through the understanding of which credit card they may want, as opposed to whatever sense of judgment they may have felt from a teller giving them that information. So there’s this unique interaction between humans and robots that we’ve learned from—and are trying to make sure we put into all of our existing and future robots—to ensure that people feel safe and comfortable in either working with or interacting with these robots.

Kerr: It’s interesting. Played back to the cobot nature of the interaction with the employees that alongside the robot, and then making sure that you can deploy this in environment that augment the consumer, the customer experience here. So Kass, another one of your big areas is the classroom, and preparing kids and students for robotics in the future. Tell us a bit about your products there and how you got started in that space.

Dawson: So I think if we take a step back and think about how SoftBank Robotics started, there was a company in Paris called Aldebaran, which launched probably in 2005 or 2006. They started the development of a companion robot based on a heat wave that hit France. This heat wave ultimately ended up killing a lot of elderly folk who didn’t have the companions or people around to tell them, “Drink more water or turn the AC on or make sure you stay inside or get outside or avoid the heat, basically.” So they created a companion robot to help ensure that something like this did not happen again in the future. That robot—and the operating system from which it runs—had a pretty simple tool used to help make that robot do the things that it could do as a bipedal, two-foot-tall robot that could speak and listen and provide information. It’s called “NAO.” The solutions that they had for that robot proved to be really easy for students, mostly at a college level, to be able to go in and program the robot to do the things that it does. Very shortly after launching that—and realizing that it was a good play in education—they created a RoboCup, if you will, similar to the World Cup in terms of a tournament for different countries to participate in, where university teams programmed teams of eight Maos to play an autonomous game of soccer. And so that’s something that has been going on for several years now and speaks to the ability of this robot to really help get students interested in and continue their learning in what is known as “STEM education.” STEM education stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And as time has gone on—as you’ve introduced robots, and you introduced the idea that arts needs to be a part of it—we’ve called it STREAM in the past, adding the “R” and the “A” for robots and art. But making sure that kids are interested in that at a very early age is critical, and something that we are really married to, because if we believe the future is going to be with automation, and to help combat some of those arguments, that automation is going to steal jobs, we need to be sure that we’re getting ahead of the curve and providing the jobs, and at least providing the pool of folks who could be the ones doing those jobs. I think also from an education standpoint, it’s important to think about, when you talk about jobs that are being replaced by automation, it’s really important to think that we also need to be retraining the existing workforce. So with things like Whiz and working with janitors and custodians, it’s important that we’re getting them trained on how to use and work with this robot, and how to figure out how to program it. And so that they extend from just being custodians or janitors into being robot managers as well.

Kerr: I wanted to circle back just a little bit on these employment questions, and especially in the Covid immediate aftermath, with such high levels of unemployment. Most of our conversations emphasize the many ways that you’re able to augment the employee tasks. Are you getting any more stronger pushback saying these jobs should be reserved for people that are unemployed? We should not be putting robot deployments out.

Dawson: So I think the interesting thing about automation and what we call cobots, or cobotics, is we’re trying to eliminate some of those menial or repetitive tasks. Those are the tasks that lots of people don’t like doing or get hurt doing, or it ends up making them disgruntled employees. A lot of the tasks that we’ve looked at with Whiz, a lot of the—vacuuming for one—is something that there’s lots of back-injury-related things from either carrying vacuums or moving vacuums around. And you also have a workforce that is, there’s constant turnover. And what we’ve heard or seen in being in this industry is that lots of folks don’t really want to ... So if you look at millennials and this new generation of potential employees, they don’t want to be custodians. They want to be more. They’ve grown up with computers and iPhones and smartphones and the internet. And so their expectations are higher. Some might argue unrealistic. But their expectations are higher. And so it’s important to showcase that it’s not about this robot taking a job, it’s about working alongside. And so it’s allowing you, as the custodian, to do those more important things and add value to your company. We’re not in any way, shape, or form positioning any of our robots in a way that it is completely replacing the human. It’s literally taking some of those tasks that really either upset people or lead to some of that turnover that you see. I think that the turnover in the cleaning industry is something like 200 percent turnover, which is insane. Basically for every job they have, they’ve got to retrain three people every year to do that. And so we’re trying to eliminate some of that and take advantage, or at least acknowledge, that where automation is beneficial, both for humans and industry, is in places where people are either upset with the work or disgruntled by that particular work, or don’t want to do that work, and make sure that we are doing that thing appropriately.

Kerr: So Kass, beyond the jobs question, and also the movement to more price this in a monthly capacity for customers, what are some of the hurdles that customers are experiencing? And how do you help them get past those barriers?

Dawson: I think the biggest other issue or hurdle that our clients would face is deployment—making sure that these robots are deployed and active and working to deliver on the ROI that is promised. To do that appropriately, we got to make sure that all of the teams and the folks that are on the ground—meaning in Whiz’s case, custodians—are fully trained, not just on how to use the robot, but also in what is the value proposition of that robot, and then get them to understand that, that is also delivering ... They’re helping with this robot and working alongside it. They’re helping to drive the value of their business up. So in selling that through down at the custodian level, you are ensuring that they’re going to be the ones deploying it every day, making sure that it’s out and operational. They’re starting it, they’re troubleshooting. If you don’t get that buy-in from them, then you’re not going to see the benefits because the robot will end up sitting in a closet somewhere because those guys just don’t believe it or don’t see it. That’s actually one of the biggest challenges robot companies face. Robotic companies fail at a 99 percent rate, which is astronomical, but understood if you aren’t being smart about how you deploy these things. If you’re trying to tell your client or the world that there’s ROI to be delivered here, but those robots aren’t being deployed at the ground level, no one’s ever going to see it, and it’s going to stay in a closet, and never actually do it. So that is a critical component to the success of the automation and deployment, is making sure everyone has bought in.

Kerr: So Kass, as you think about the deployment of cobots, to what degree are you needing to work with your clients to develop new processes? Let’s take, maybe, the cleaning example. You’re able to do more things with the cobot. You’re augmenting the human labor. Do you need to work with the clients in order to have a different approach to cleaning? Or is there layering it into the way that they’re already working?

Dawson: That’s a great question, Bill. I think it’s multifold in the answer. We’re working with our clients, but we’re also working with the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the cleaning industry is a little older, has been a little slower to embrace new technology. So implementing this new technology, it’s critical that we get the industry to understand and promote the use of automation and what its true value proposition is. When that value proposition is the up-leveling of what the custodians can actually do, it’s important to sit down and think about, okay, we have to train people, to your point, on the process of what’s the best way to route this robot, because the Whiz is a teach-and-repeat model. So you go in as the human, teach it one time—again in true cobotic fashion—then it learns that path that one time and will do it every single time after that, after you’ve taught it. It’ll do the same path by avoiding obstacles that may somehow move in its way of that path during the day. That’s something that is new, and we have to teach. Because how custodians have cleaned in the past in terms of vacuuming, as I mentioned earlier, was either spot cleaning or they have a very set way of going about it. And there’s a more efficient and economic way to deploy Whiz. So we do have to teach them that process. The other thing is, as they’re now being freed up to do other things and have that time back, we’re trying to help them understand and work with them to define what are those new tasks that we can tackle that help us drive more value and, as we’ve talked about in the post-pandemic world, create a cleaner and safer environment for all the folks that are coming into these spaces. So it’s two-fold. There’s the hardware process, but also the overall, what are we going to now do with all of our free time? And how does that impact our day-to-day business?

Kerr: Okay. Maybe we can end, Kass, with the final question that’s not as much about your client’s needs and the technology, the robot, but instead just your life as managing and leading a robotics business. And what do you anticipate over the next 12 months—as I love to say, as the new normal emerges or we ideally get out of the early phases of the Covid crisis—how is SoftBank Robotics going to be different in the future?

Dawson: I would say that what’s happened during and post-coronavirus is we’ve seen an acceleration of the adoption of automation. If it’s unsafe to have contact with other humans or be in spaces that have had humans in them, the world is now embracing the idea of robots coming in and helping to do certain things—whether that’s touching your food, picking up and moving your items, or delivering your items, or cleaning a space—that has accelerated. And we’ve gotten more interest in our robots as a result of this. It’s a watershed moment for us—not to say that we want to take advantage of a pandemic, but I think the world is going to embrace automation more rapidly or more quickly, which will ultimately help us bring those solutions out into the marketplace. What we’ve learned with automation and robotics as we evolve our solutions is, the more simple you can be with your solution—so focus on that one task, just deliver that one task. Because if you try to do too much, you try to boil the ocean, either it takes you too long to build or it’s too expensive, or you can never meet expectations. If you do that one simple task and execute against that really well, which we’re doing with Whiz and cleaning, you can prove that value in ROI rather quickly and begin to escalate and help those businesses think about, well, what other automation might there be out there for me? So I’m excited about the future of this company. I’ve always been excited, but I think now, with the general adoption and more willingness to embrace, I think it’s going to be better.

Kerr: Kass Dawson is the Vice President of Brand Strategy and Marketing Communications at SoftBank Robotics. We thank him for joining us today to talk about the Covid crisis, the rapidly escalating demand for cleaning robots, and also what lies ahead in this important part of automation. Thanks, Kass.

Dawson: Thank you, Bill. It’s a pleasure.

Kerr: Thank you for listening to a special episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast. To find out more information about our project on the Future of Work and for more information on the coronavirus’s impact, visit our website at hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work and sign up for our newsletter.