Answer telephones to direct calls or provide information
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 | 25 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Communicating with People Outside the Organization (4.A.4.a.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 25 occupations that perform it.
- Answer patients' calls and determine how to assist them.
- Answer patient call signals, signal lights, bells, or intercom systems to determine patients' needs.
- Answer telephone inquiries, referring callers to pharmacist when necessary.
- Answer telephone calls to take messages, answer questions, and provide information during non-business hours or when switchboard is closed.
- Answer incoming phone calls.
- Answer telephone calls from potential customers who have been solicited through advertisements.
- Monitor emergency and code alarms, make emergency announcements, or route emergency calls to the appropriate location.
- Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information.
- Perform general administrative tasks, such as answering telephones, scheduling appointments, and ordering supplies or equipment.
- Perform general office duties, such as filing, answering telephones, and handling routine correspondence.
- Answer telephones and assist customers with their questions.
- Perform clerical tasks, such as answering phones or distributing mail.
- Perform administrative tasks, such as answering telephone calls, filing court documents, or maintaining office supplies or equipment.
- Perform patient services, such as answering the telephone or assisting patients with financial or medical questions.
- Perform clerical activities, such as answering phones, sorting mail, filing, typing, word processing, and photocopying and mailing out material.
- Operate telephone switchboard to answer, screen, or forward calls, providing information, taking messages, or scheduling appointments.
- Receive incoming telephone or alarm system calls regarding emergency and non-emergency police and fire service, emergency ambulance service, information, and after-hours calls for departments within a city.
- Answer phone calls and direct calls to appropriate parties or take messages.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for routine communication and explanation, and what it costs.
Drafting replies costs nothing beyond the assistant you already pay for. Only move to a support agent billed per resolution once the inbound volume is large enough that the per-resolution price beats the hour it takes you.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
25 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Billing and Posting Clerks
- Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
- Brokerage Clerks
- Cashiers
- Court, Municipal, and License Clerks
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks
- Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan
- Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Nursing Assistants
- Office Clerks, General
- Orderlies
- Pharmacy Aides
- Public Safety Telecommunicators
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Security Guards
- Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
- Telemarketers
- Telephone Operators
- Tellers
- Word Processors and Typists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Provide information to guests, clients, or customers”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
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.