Counsel clients on mental health or personal achievement
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 | 5 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Providing Consultation and Advice to Others (4.A.4.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 5 occupations that perform it.
- Coach senior executives and managers on leadership and performance.
- Counsel individuals, groups, or families to help them understand problems, deal with crisis situations, define goals, and develop realistic action plans.
- Counsel children and families to help solve conflicts and problems in learning and adjustment.
- Provide education or counseling to individuals and families.
- Counsel workers about job and career-related issues.
- Interact with clients to assist them in gaining insight, defining goals, and planning action to achieve effective personal, social, educational, or vocational development and adjustment.
- Serve as a resource to help families and schools deal with crises, such as separation and loss.
- Provide psychotherapy, behavior therapy, or other counseling interventions to patients with neurological disorders.
- Develop therapeutic and treatment plans based on clients' interests, abilities, or needs.
- Use a variety of treatment methods, such as psychotherapy, hypnosis, behavior modification, stress reduction therapy, psychodrama, or play therapy.
- Advise clients on how they could be helped by counseling.
- Provide occupational, educational, or other information to individuals so that they can make educational or vocational plans.
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
5 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Counsel others about personal matters”. 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.