Recommend products or services to 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 | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Providing Consultation and Advice to Others (4.A.4.b.6) |
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.
- Match individuals' needs and eligibility with available financial aid programs to provide informed recommendations.
- Recommend treatment and prevention methods for pest problems to clients.
- Recommend and provide advice on a wide variety of products and services.
- Recommend, select, and help locate or obtain merchandise based on customer needs and desires.
- Emphasize or recommend service features based on knowledge of customers' needs and vendor capabilities and limitations.
- Select or assist customers in selecting products based on customer needs, product specifications, and applicable regulations.
- Recommend products to customers, based on customers' needs and interests.
- Suggest specific product purchases to meet customers' needs.
- Review plans for new construction with clients, enumerating and recommending available options and features.
- Recommend improved materials or machinery to customers, documenting how such changes will lower costs or increase production.
- Recommend product or service improvements to employers.
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.
- Counter and Rental Clerks
- Demonstrators and Product Promoters
- Loan Officers
- Pest Control Workers
- Real Estate Sales Agents
- Retail Salespersons
- Sales Engineers
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Advise others on products or services”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Advise customers on the use of products or services | 20 |
| Advise customers on technical or procedural issues | 9 |
| Recommend types of assistive devices | 7 |
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.