Looking to the Future: What Jobs are Bots Replacing?
Business

Looking to the Future: What Jobs are Bots Replacing?

13th August 2018

Advancements in technologies are usually beneficial to consumers but sometimes can be very hard on workers. Over the last couple of centuries, companies have embraced mechanising or automating jobs to increase workplace safety and save on money. Now that we’re in the Information Age, businesses are benefiting greatly from AI technology that is improving the customer experience, but drastically changing the landscape of jobs in the tech industry.

What are Bots Currently Doing?

Right now, there is a lot of excitement but also fear around the rise of bot technology. Chatbots can communicate with customers, gather information, and even follow up with clients. Being able to communicate 24/7 with thousands of people at a time is enticing for businesses looking to save money and streamline their workflow.

Having a chatbot might be great for a business’s bottom line, but it creates a problem for employees. Bots can do simple tasks that many employees spend a lot of their day doing. If bots take over mundane and time-consuming assignments, this will free up employees to focus on the primary function of the job. In turn, more work will get done by one individual with the assistance of AI, which could lead to a reduction in staff.

Here are a few industries that will change due to the utilisation of bots:

Customer Service

You’ve probably spent a few frustrating moments dealing with a robotic directory menu. However, if you’re patient enough, you can accomplish your goals over the phone without ever talking to a person. This process of non-human interaction between a company and a customer saves the business money at the expense of the client’s time. A company doesn’t have to spend money on having someone on staff to direct a call or solve a problem, but it can take a long time for the customer to navigate the maze of pre-recorded prompts. By utilizing conversational chatbots instead of using an automated directory system, customers can have more nuanced discussions with bots without feeling like they’re wasting their time. This is a great benefit to customers but does mean a reduction in staffing at customer service centers.

Sales

It should come as no surprise that sales would be affected by the increase of bot usage. Many customers have moved from making purchases at brick and mortar shops to buying most everything online. The rise of e-commerce has already greatly reduced the need for sales reps. With the integration of bots on e-commerce sites, we can expect that many sales positions will be lost. Bots can communicate with customers 24/7, drive clients at points of sales, and also gather information about a buyer’s habits. Communicating with customers is the bulk of any salesperson’s job. With bots doing the heavy lifting, there will only need to be a few sales managers to oversee the entire operation.

Marketing and Advertising

Promoting your company or brand can be an extremely complex and time-consuming endeavour. As you know, many marketing or advertising campaigns have hundreds of moving parts that all need to work together perfectly to see a successful outcome. Because of this, you’ll start to notice almost every job affected by bots. Programs assisting content writers with proofreading and marketers with information gathering and analytics are already out there. Just this small amount of automated assistance is helping save time, but it also slowly cutting jobs directly related to these tasks.

Personal Assistant / Bookkeeping

Scheduling appointments, keeping track of finances, and communicating with clients are all jobs bots can do now. Technology has positioned itself in a way that we can carry a personal assistant in our pocket. Smartphones allow us to keep track of our daily activities, plan future events, and remain aware of the what’s going on with our business. With the right combination of bot programs, personal assistants and bookkeepers are non-essential to daily operations.

Social Media / Public Relations

In the sea of advertising and information, engaging your audience is crucial and takes up a lot of time and resources. This is especially true for international companies who need to be in the spotlight 24/7 and have content in several different languages. Bots can be programmed and scripted to manage social media outreach and actually execute social media campaigns. The bot technology, at this moment, still needs a human handler on the back end. However, with the advancement of AI and web-scraping, soon you will see bots that are fully capable of creating social media content and interacting with the public with minimal guidance from their programmers.

New Jobs Created by Bots

As we slowly add bots to our tool belt, some occupations will inevitably disappear. Unlike other professions, however, there will be a lot of new jobs and opportunities created by bots in the marketing industry.

Data collection is a huge part of shaping decisions about how to develop a marketing strategy. A human can only contact a limited amount of people in a given day, whereas bots can operate all day with multiple people at a time. This streamlines the data collecting process immensely. Understanding and utilising this data is where new opportunities arise. Currently, it is imperative that a person takes the data gathered and decides on the best marketing strategy. This creates a whole new field of specialised marketers that can utilise bot data to optimise campaign results.

Content writing is a big part of any marketing campaign. Right now, bots are not being used to produce content like blogs, white papers, and ad copy. Creating compelling and conversational content is a difficult task for even the most advanced AI.

What bots are really going to change is what kind of content people are going to need to write. Bots utilise complex scripts to seem more human while talking to bot users. Writing chatbot scripts is a whole new line of jobs for content writers. Scripting a bot is challenging and requires that you know your customers and can anticipate what they will ask. Imagine writing the dialogue for a movie script, but you only know what one character will say! It can be difficult, but a well-written script is the key to the success of a bot.

What Jobs will Bots Replace

Using Chatbots for Good

Instead of reading entire blogs or research papers, chatbots allow users to experience individually curated content (ICC). Users can ask bots questions and receive direct answers rather than having to hunt through pages to find the information they need. A user can simply ask a bot to generate the information they desire to learn. ICC creates a unique opportunity for you to interact with your audience.

Understanding: You can script a bot to ask questions of the user that you lack information about. Finding out the habits and inside information about your audience can be a crucial factor when determining the best ways to execute a marketing campaign.

Refining: Bots can give you hard data about their interactions with users. This allows you to learn your strengths and weaknesses in real time. Instead of releasing a marketing campaign based on static data, you can utilise the active bot data to refine your strategy and make money-saving adjustments.

Delivering: Once you have refined your campaign based on the information gathered by your bot, you can utilise your chatbot to deliver content based on your adjustments. After that, you can begin the process of understanding and refining all over again. Bots are a powerful tool for market research and customer interaction.

Every industry has integrated technology into its workflow to reduce cost and make a job easier for their employees. This can sometimes lead to jobs cut, but many times, technology can open up opportunities for new careers. Bots are still far from replacing industry jobs, so there is still plenty of time to prepare yourself to capitalise on their rise.

[Image credits: rawpixelAlex Knight & Bence ▲ Boros on Unsplash]

Tags

Written By
Morgen Henderson is a writer who grew up in Utah. In her free time, she loves experiencing foreign cultures, baking, and improving her Spanish skills.
Level Up Your Mobile Content Game
Latest Post from Morgen
Business Level Up Your Mobile Content Game
11th February 2020
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.