Discuss goods or services information with customers or patrons
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 | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others (4.A.4.a.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Explain the cremation process to family or friends of the deceased.
- Confer with customers by telephone or in person to provide information about products or services, take or enter orders, cancel accounts, or obtain details of complaints.
- Answer inquiries pertaining to hotel services, guest registration, and travel directions, or make recommendations regarding shopping, dining, or entertainment.
- Answer customers' questions and explain available services, such as deposit accounts, bonds, and securities.
- Recommend merchandise or services that will meet customers' needs.
- Provide information about establishment, such as location of departments or offices, employees within the organization, or services provided.
- Confer with customers to determine their service requirements and travel preferences.
- Question callers to determine their locations and the nature of their problems to determine type of response needed.
- Communicate with customers and vendors to exchange information regarding products, materials, and services.
- Answer customers' questions about merchandise and advise customers on merchandise selection.
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
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Crematory Operators
- Customer Service Representatives
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- New Accounts Clerks
- Order Clerks
- Public Safety Telecommunicators
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Reservation and Transportation Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
- Stockers and Order Fillers
- Weighers, Measurers, Checkers, and Samplers, Recordkeeping
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Explain technical details of products or services”. 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.