Inform individuals or organizations of status or findings
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 | 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 10 occupations that perform it.
- Warn violators of infractions or penalties.
- Inform individuals and groups of pollution control regulations and inspection findings, and explain how problems can be corrected.
- Prepare correspondence, reports of inspections or investigations, or recommendations for action.
- Provide information concerning the circumstances of death to relatives of the deceased.
- Contact job applicants to inform them of the status of their applications.
- Analyze organizational, occupational, and industrial data to facilitate organizational functions and provide technical information to business, industry, and government.
- Contact borrowers with delinquent accounts to obtain payment in full or to negotiate repayment plans.
- Send notices to taxpayers when accounts are delinquent.
- Obtain and serve subpoenas.
- Provide requested information on students' progress and the development of case plans.
- Prepare correspondence to inform concerned parties of licensing decisions or appeals processes.
- Arrange for the next of kin to be notified of deaths.
- Notify taxpayers of any overpayment or underpayment, and either issue a refund or request further payment.
- Impose payment deadlines on delinquent taxpayers and monitor payments to ensure that deadlines are met.
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.
- Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialists
- Compliance Officers
- Coroners
- Environmental Compliance Inspectors
- Fraud Examiners, Investigators and Analysts
- Government Property Inspectors and Investigators
- Human Resources Specialists
- Loan Officers
- Residential Advisors
- Tax Examiners and Collectors, and Revenue Agents
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.