Center for Future Banking, MIT Media Laboratory

Goals and EnvisionsSmileMeter is a novel intelligent vision system that provides information about nonverbal communication. SmileMeter can be used in many areas in which social interactions happen such as banks, convenience stores, hospitals, schools, etc. First prototyping could start from Center Plaza Office in Boston, MA, one of the Bank of America branches. The whole system mainly consists of two parts:

1. Customer Affect Tagging System provides bank tellers with quantified nonverbal communication information such as facial expressions, head postures, eye gazes from the service encounters with their customers. 2. Smile Counting Technology provides Bank of America with an innovative way to contribute to the society by donating charity money associated with the number of smiles from customers’ facial expressions.

Customer Affect Tagging System

Customer Affect Tagging SystemThe technology gathers nonverbal communication data such as facial expressions(smile, confused, bored, angry), head gestures(right tilted, left tilted, right turn, left turn, front, upward, downward), eye gazes(right upper, left upper, right lower, left lower, front) from service encounters at both teller and customer side.

The data gathered by the Customer Affect Tagging System can be used to figure out useful patterns in teller and customer interactions associated with waiting time, service, visit frequency.

Tellers can learn how they interact with their customers from these data analysis results, observe evolutions in their interaction and improve the quality of services.

SmileMeter : Smile Counting Technology

SmileMeter : Smile Counting TechnologyThe number on SmileMeter represents how many smiles customers had in today’s service encounters, which suggests how many smiles the teller has sold today and how pleased the customers were today.

SmileMeter could encourage the teller to have a positive attitude about work and entertain customers by increasing the number on SmileMeter as customers smile.

SmileMeter : Smile Counting TechnologyThe amount of charity money could be %10 or %1 of the number of smiles in dollars, which makes it as a reasonable price. The formula that calculates the price per smile could also be made taking into account the portion of charity money in total income, the number of smiles per day, national anniversary, etc.

Bridging customer smiles to the contribution to society lets customers know that the bank contributes to charity, makes them more delighted and creates an appealing mental picture to the public.

SmileMeter Board

A SmileMeter board could display the number of smiles per customer per day or the price of smile as the currency exchange rate board or NASDAQ computer bulletin board does.

SmileMeter : Several Design Suggestions

Issues in behavior economics:How do those designs affect customers’ behavior?Which one makes customers more smile? Does this affect customers’ retention? Do they prefer contributions to charities or fee reductions?