Advise customers on the use of products or services.
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Routine communication and explanation |
| Jobs that do it | 20 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders, Generalist agents |
| O*NET activity | Providing Consultation and Advice to Others (4.A.4.b.6) |
What could do this work.
These are the categories of tool that address routine communication and explanation, with a few live examples from our landscape. We name the category rather than promise that a specific product does your specific task, because that promise would not be true.
Vertical agents
Builders
Generalist agents
Categories are matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Before committing to any of them, check that the tool can reach the system your record actually lives in. That connection, not the model, is where most of these projects stall.
Who does this work.
20 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers
- Computer Hardware Engineers
- Counter and Rental Clerks
- Demonstrators and Product Promoters
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Electronics Engineers, Except Computer
- Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors
- Landscape Architects
- Mechanical Engineers
- Nanosystems Engineers
- Parts Salespersons
- Precision Agriculture Technicians
- Radio Frequency Identification Device Specialists
- Retail Salespersons
- Robotics Engineers
- Sales Engineers
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products
Work that goes with it.
O*NET groups these under “Advise others on products or services”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Recommend products or services to customers | 10 |
| Advise customers on technical or procedural issues | 9 |
| Recommend types of assistive devices | 7 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.