Provide transportation information to passengers or customers
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 | 14 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 14 occupations that perform it.
- Announce routes or stops.
- Check baggage and cargo and direct passengers to designated locations for loading.
- Quote prices to customers.
- Make announcements regarding flights, using public address systems.
- Announce and demonstrate safety and emergency procedures, such as the use of oxygen masks, seat belts, and life jackets.
- Inform regular customers of new products or services and price changes.
- Assist passengers, such as elderly or individuals with disabilities, on and off bus, ensure they are seated properly, help carry baggage, and answer questions about bus schedules or routes.
- Provide passengers with information or advice about the local area, points of interest, hotels, or restaurants.
- Determine fares based on trip distances and times, using taximeters and fee schedules, and announce fares to passengers.
- Make announcements to passengers, such as notifications of upcoming stops or schedule delays.
- Provide customer assistance and information, such as giving directions or handling wheelchairs.
- Provide customers with information about local roads or highways.
- Interact with the public to answer traffic-related questions, respond to complaints or requests, or discuss traffic control ordinances, plans, policies, or procedures.
- Respond to passengers' questions, requests, or complaints.
- Respond to students' questions, requests, or complaints.
- Provide customers with travel suggestions and information sources, such as guides, directories, brochures, or maps.
- Prepare passengers and aircraft for landing, following procedures.
- Announce stops to passengers.
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
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
- Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants
- Bus Drivers, Transit and Intercity
- Driver/Sales Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand
- Flight Attendants
- Parking Attendants
- Passenger Attendants
- Reservation and Transportation Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
- School Bus Monitors
- Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs
- Subway and Streetcar Operators
- Taxi Drivers
- Traffic Technicians
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.