Refer customers to appropriate personnel
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can propose the plan, chase the replies and keep the record current. To actually change anything it needs write access to a calendar or work system, and a person still owns the tradeoffs when two plans collide.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Scheduling, planning and resource control |
| Jobs that do it | 14 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| 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 14 occupations that perform it.
- Investigate and direct patient inquiries or complaints to appropriate medical staff members and follow up to ensure satisfactory resolution.
- Refer patrons to gaming cashiers to collect winnings.
- Greet visitors, log them in and out of the facility, assign them security badges, and contact employee escorts.
- Refer unresolved customer grievances to designated departments for further investigation.
- Initiate procedures to grant, modify, deny, or terminate assistance, or refer applicants to other agencies for assistance.
- Record guest comments or complaints, referring customers to managers as necessary.
- Answer routine inquiries and refer patrons in need of professional assistance to librarians.
- Refer customers to appropriate bank personnel to meet their financial needs.
- Refer exporters to experts in areas such as trade financing, international marketing, government export requirements, international banking, or marine insurance.
- Answer routine inquiries, and refer calls not requiring dispatches to appropriate departments and agencies.
- Answer customers' questions about services and charges, or direct them to customer service centers.
- Respond to complaints regarding mail theft, delivery problems, and lost or damaged mail, filling out forms and making appropriate referrals for investigation.
- Greet visitors, ascertain purpose of visit, and direct them to appropriate staff.
- Greet visitors or callers and handle their inquiries or direct them to the appropriate persons according to their needs.
- Refer patients to appropriate health care services or resources.
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 scheduling, planning and resource control, and what it costs.
Scheduling is a connector problem rather than an intelligence one, and $9 a month of Make covers both the calendar and the chasing. An agent platform priced per seat adds nothing you would notice here.
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.
- Customer Service Representatives
- Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
- Freight Forwarders
- Gambling Dealers
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Meter Readers, Utilities
- New Accounts Clerks
- Patient Representatives
- Postal Service Clerks
- Public Safety Telecommunicators
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Assist others to access additional services or resources”. 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.