Imagine one of those days when even a dog’s best efforts fail to make you smile. That’s the day you have to go to work and you’ll try to make the most of your day. Unless you work at a Japanese supermarket chain, AEON, you don’t need to smile. Why? They’ve built a system that evaluates the smiles of their employees through artificial intelligence. And not only that: it encourages them to compete.

And of course, it reopens the debate about worker treatment and harassment in Japan.

Gamifying grimaces. As we read in SCMP, on July 1st, AEON announced that it has become the first company in the world to deploy an AI system to measure the smiles of its employees. It’s something they will use in 240 stores nationwide and it also has its own name: ‘Mr Smile’.

This software uses AI to track employee smiles, something that includes the facial expression, volume, and tone of greeting used when greeting and treating customers. It takes into account over 450 parameters and gives the employee a score. The company goes even further; there are gamification elements that encourage employees to compete with each other and their own records.

Harassment debateThe company says that in a test conducted at eight of its stores, employee attitudes improved by up to 1.6 times in three months, and that the goal is to “standardize employee smiles and make customers as happy as possible.” Of course, that has repercussions in a country where some customers already have to mediate how workers are treated. In a survey of 30,000 employees affiliated with one of Japan’s largest unions this year, nearly half of employees reported experiencing harassment from customers.

Critics of this smile system say, “Forcing service workers to smile according to a standard is another form of customer harassment.” Another criticism is that “smiles should be something nice and genuine, not a product treatment.” Another survey respondent agreed, noting that “using a machine to standardize people’s attitudes sounds cold and stupid.”

Barista’s eye. And don’t think Mr. Smile is a new tool. In fact, in May 2023, the company NeuroSpot introduced ‘BaristaEye’, a monitoring system for both employees and customers of a coffee shop. It is a system where artificial intelligence keeps track of everything that happens in a coffee shop. According to the product description, it allows you to control the actions of staff in real time and “ensures that they follow the appropriate processes, preventing possible fraudulent situations.”

It also analyzes customer behavior, including waiting time, satisfaction levels, and popular visit times. All of this provides instant alerts when “customer dissatisfaction” is detected, allowing the management team to quickly address issues and maintain a positive customer experience.

Smiling at 0 yen. This initiative is not entirely new. For decades in Japan, you’ve been able to order free smiles at McDonald’s. The fast-food chain has 3,000 stores nationwide and an estimated 100 million customers, and consumers can request a smile as part of the menu. It costs zero yen, but the employees will actually smile at you because they have to. But over the years, some customers have abused the service, which has put even more stress on employees. Some have been known to request them in bad ways, even asking workers to smile repeatedly.

It became so popular that the brand launched an ad campaign called ‘No Smiles’ depicting this behavior. They even created a song that captured the emotions of their employees, which was nothing more than a marketing campaign to win employees over. Because? Because Gen Z represents 60% of the workforce, and they didn’t want to work for a company where customers would touch them for something like a smile. And it worked: The song went viral, and the company saw a 115% increase in job applications.

At home. These smiles can even be ordered at home, and the experiment was conducted by SoraNews media. She ordered two batches of burgers and discovered something interesting: whether you wanted to smile or not, the delivery girl would smile at you while delivering the package. The difference was that they would draw a smile emoji and messages like “thank you” or “enjoy your meal” in the order you wanted to smile.

Image | Abasaa: あばさ

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