Around the world,
businesses field hundreds of billions
of requests from us each year.
We want our flights changed,
a purchase refunded, a claim reviewed.
That takes the labor of millions of agents
who tend to our every need.
But soon, automation will take over much of that,
and it starts with the painstaking work of this 23-year-old.
My name is Laura Morales, and I'm a chatbot designer.
You probably know
the Dominican Republic for its beaches.
But further west in the country's capital of Santo Domingo,
there's a bustling hub of call centers
for American businesses.
Laura works for one of them, at a company called OutPLEX.
After you.
Some of OutPLEX's inquiries
are handled by traditional call center agents
over the phone.
Others are handled by contact center agents
over live written chat.
Last year, the company introduced a third kind of agent.
A bot.
Laura oversees bots for three U.S.-based clients.
And these bots greet customers
looking for assistance online.
The bots resolve simple queries on their own,
and the more complicated questions
get escalated to a human representative.
Me, as an agent, I used to take three conversations,
or just one call at the time.
With bots, you don't have that limitation.
Alexa, will I need
an umbrella tomorrow?
It might rain tomorrow.
There's a 54% chance.
Bots today are everywhere.
And so the people who design their speech
are in high demand.
The job is kinda like writing a very dry screenplay,
with a choose your own adventure element
for the many ways customers will respond.
The hard part comes once the bot goes live.
Can you go to the metrics hub over there?
Often, its pre-scripted conversations
don't work out the way Laura and her team hope they would,
so they're constantly tinkering.
The way to start a day with the bots.
I need to check how the bots did on the previous day.
So, I go into analytics,
and my favorite one is this.
It's the unmatched phrases.
These are the moments when the bot didn't know
what the customer wanted.
Exactly.
And I can also see how many clients or visitors
clicked on the first button or the second button
on the main menu.
So, if my visitors are not interacting with my menus,
that means that maybe something's not right.
So, it's interesting 'cause you used to be coaching
the human agents, and now you're coaching a robot.
Is that easier or harder?
It's easier.
You don't have to worry about hurting a bot's feelings.
You're not emotional about it.
You're just doing what you need to do
for getting the results you want.
Laura grew up hearing all about the industry.
Laura started out as an entry-level agent
when she was 17, and worked her way up.
Last year, she was chosen to manage her company's
first interactive chatbot.
And today makes about $8 an hour,
which is four times what she earned
when she first became an agent.
The transition to work on chatbots
took about three months to learn various aspects of the job,
including training on special software
that doesn't require her to code.
Laura immediately saw the benefits.
A bot is never late.
A bot doesn't get sick or pregnant.
Those are specific human situations that you can't fight.
Automation is able to take that out.
But her mom had some hesitations.
For now, the introduction of the bots
hasn't led to any layoffs.
Because they've helped OutPLEX win more business,
the company has actually hired more human agents
to handle the inquiries that get escalated from the bots.
But as the technology gets better,
it's hard not to worry about how this is all gonna play out.
And that was a conversation
that required some strong Dominican rum.
Eventually, surely we will need
fewer human call center agents than we do now.
Automation is a reality.
And the skill set that you will need
to work in this industry,
it's going to be different from the regular agents
you have today.
I do believe it will get more technical.
It will not be dealing with a customer anymore.
It will be monitoring the software.
And if you don't adapt, you will need to do something else.
Is there a small part of you that feels guilty
for automating away the job
that gave you your start in your career
and is the job of a lot of your colleagues right now.
Not at all.
Like, zero guilt.
Zero guilt?
Yeah.
Zero hesitation?
It's happening already.
You might as well be a part of it.
Thank God I'm part of it.
Whether you're a grocer, doctor,
factory worker, or journalist,
all of our jobs will soon be reshaped by automation.
Some will benefit from the new work that will emerge,
and others will watch their jobs disappear
with no clear path to another livelihood.
Managing this transition will be the defining challenge
for us in the decades ahead.
And we need to be ready for it.