Greet customers, patrons, or visitors
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The documentation around care is highly automatable and that is where the time goes back. The care itself needs physical presence and someone accountable for the outcome, so this work stays where it is.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Direct care and assistance |
| Jobs that do it | 21 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents |
| O*NET activity | Assisting and Caring for Others (4.A.4.a.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 21 occupations that perform it.
- Greet and log in patients arriving at office or clinic.
- Greet customers and help them locate merchandise.
- Greet and seat customers.
- Greet customers and ask about the quality of service they are receiving.
- Greet customers and make them feel welcome.
- Greet patrons attending entertainment events.
- Greet people at the funeral home.
- Greet incoming guests and escort them to their rooms.
- Greet and register visitors, and issue any required identification badges or safety devices.
- Greet new arrivals to activities, introducing them to other participants, explaining facility rules, and encouraging participation.
- Provide customer service by greeting and assisting customers and responding to customer inquiries and complaints.
- Greet customers entering establishments.
- Greet customers and discuss the type, quality, and quantity of merchandise sought for rental.
- Greet customers and ascertain what each customer wants or needs.
- Greet visitors, log them in and out of the facility, assign them security badges, and contact employee escorts.
- Greet, register, and assign rooms to guests of hotels or motels.
- Greet persons entering establishment, determine nature and purpose of visit, and direct or escort them to specific destinations.
- Greet visitors and determine whether they should be given access to specific individuals.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing for the care itself. The time comes back from the documentation around it, so the stack worth building is the recording one, on the pages for that work.
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.
Who does this work
21 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Baggage Porters and Bellhops
- Cashiers
- Counter and Rental Clerks
- Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendants and Bartender Helpers
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- First-Line Supervisors of Gambling Services Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
- Funeral Attendants
- Gambling Dealers
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Medical Assistants
- Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Pharmacy Aides
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Recreation Workers
- Retail Salespersons
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs
- Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
- Tour Guides and Escorts
- Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Provide general assistance to others, such as customers, patrons, or motorists”. 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.