Discuss design or technical features of products or services with technical personnel
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 | 9 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates (4.A.4.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 9 occupations that perform it.
- Discuss security solutions with information technology teams or management.
- Discuss and plan systems with solution architects, system engineers, or cybersecurity experts to meet customer requirements.
- Consult with machinists to ensure that electromechanical equipment or systems meet design specifications.
- Confer with vendors to evaluate new equipment or reagents or to discuss the customization of product lines to meet user requirements.
- Discuss project goals, equipment requirements, or methodologies with colleagues or team members.
- Contact equipment manufacturers for technical assistance, as needed.
- Attend company meetings to exchange product information and coordinate work activities with other departments.
- Provide feedback to product design teams so that products can be tailored to clients' needs.
- Confer with customers and engineers to assess equipment needs and to determine system requirements.
- Discuss data needs with engineers, product managers, or data scientists to identify blockchain requirements.
- Consult with engineers regarding technical problems with products.
- Provide information needed for the development of custom-made machinery.
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
9 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Blockchain Engineers
- Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians
- First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers
- Molecular and Cellular Biologists
- Penetration Testers
- Precision Agriculture Technicians
- Remote Sensing Scientists and Technologists
- Sales Engineers
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Communicate with others about specifications or project details”. 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.