Monthly Archives: March 2017

Brocade networking solutions help the worlds leading organizations turn their networks into platforms for business innovation as they transition to todays era of digital business.

IT professionals are singing the praises of automation. Its a transformative technology practice that allows IT to improve agility and the availability of services while liberating IT staff from time-consuming routine tasks. These are essential factors as organizations transition to digital business.

But IT leaders also preach prudence. Automation in IT must be approached with a clear strategy. It must be fully understood, skillfully deployed, and diligently monitored, tested, and optimized.

We reached out to influential IT leaders to learn what factors and best practices organizations should consider in order to realize the maximum benefits of automation in the data center. Heres what they said.

Dan Conde (@dconde_esg), cloud and network infrastructure analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, summarizes some of the use cases of automation and its potential to influence enterprise IT:

Interest in automation has arisen for many reasons. Fundamentally, it is to assist in areas where there are skills shortages or issues related to scale. However, developments like the DevOps style of infrastructure management also contribute to its interest. One way to help is to treat infrastructure as code to help configure and provision systems using DevOps-style tools and scripts. Another important way is to use automation as a way to automate the workflow. This helps integration between different teams - and [Enterprise Strategy Group] research shows integration between network operations and other IT domains to be one of the biggest challenges facing the organizations networking teams.

Of course, the use of automation will be unique to every organization which is exactly why each company must make sure it is fully prepared before leaping in. This is a common theme among those that advocate for a deliberate approach.

Automating tasks and orchestrating processes is something that every IT organization should focus on when the time is right. However, before they do, the best thing that IT organizations can do is to ensure that everyone involved gets thoroughly educated on tools/systems that will be used for automation/orchestration as well as the business applications AND users that are involved. You cant automate what you dont understand and you cant automate properly unless you understand automation scripting and tools.

- David Davis (@DavidMDavis), Partner at ActualTechMedia.com

Businesses considering automation should first take the time to understand their technology processes thoroughly. That discovery process will inform their automation practice.

- Ethan Banks (@ecbanks), co-founder at Packet Pushers

While the opportunities to automate data center operations are becoming greater every day, IT professionals have to continue to strengthen their own skills to successfully select, implement, and utilize the right automation tools to meet their specific IT and business management needs.

-Jeffrey Kaplan (@thinkstrategies), managing director at THINKstrategies, Inc.

IT leaders understand how essential automation will be, but they stress the importance of maintaining a perpetual strategy focused on maximizing the business value that automation can deliver.

Always start by understanding user requirements and how this impacts the organization. Remember, automation is designed to make both IT and business processes easier. And, a major part of this digital transformation were experiencing is because of the digital user. In designing automation for the data center, leverage the technology as a direct tool to help improve overall processes; and, like any tool, make sure to review your automation settings for optimal performance.

- Bill Kleyman (@QuadStack), chief technical officer at MTM Technologies

Critical to any automation initiative is a reporting system that monitors the system for out-of-scope effects. Automation is critical in virtualized environments to maximize the use of invested assets by avoiding variable HR costs as a factor of total assets invested.

-Jon Freeman (@Wi_FiMAN), vice president WorldWide sales and cloud design

The best thing you can do when implementing and using automated systems in your business is to test and optimize. A broken system will not delight your customers, and an optimized system will create an enjoyable experience for your customer and deliver better results for your business.

- Robyn Kyberd (@RobynKyberd), digital marketing consultant at Optimise and Grow Online

Indeed, automation promises to shake things up. Many organizations that embrace this technology will reap the benefits of increased efficiency and improvements to their products and servicesas well as the customer experience they deliver.

But as this transformation takes hold, IT leaders must prepare their teams for a future business environment that may look entirely different than the one they were hired into. Developing and integrating the technologies that will form that future is a big responsibility, and riding it out will require some outside-the-box ideas.

Or, as Sarah Austin (@sarahaustin), a data scientist and technologist, puts it:

Companies must sharpen their skills in creative thinking. Automation will replace mundane tasks, which will open more opportunity for creative strategies.

Automation is one of the pivotal tools that will help IT leaders envision and invent the future digital landscape - but only if they approach it with precision and practice it with diligence.

To learn more about automation, visit our blog page on Network World.com

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IT Professionals Weigh in on Enterprise Automation - Network World

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Peter Woollacott: analysts come on board to solve problems, the surgeon comes on board to cut, not to push the patient from the ward into the theatre and wash them down.

Cyber security is all about speed finding and dealing with a threat or vulnerability as quickly as possible. The damage that can be wrought in minutes, let alone days and weeks, could prove devastating to any business, no matter the size or industry.

However this need for speed is not being seen in practice, with many reports putting data breach discovery taking upwards of 200 days. However, Peter Woollacott, Huntsman Security CEO, has a cure for the lag in cyber security automation.

At the moment, Woollacott argues, analysts are weighed down with basic tasks, drowning under the weight of less-important tasks all the while the more serious threats go unresolved and are left free to wreak havoc.

If they are manually trying to manage all of this information that they are being bombarded with and reach conclusions, while all of the information is coming in at machine speed, they are always under water, the Huntsman CEO told CBR.

Some may be quick to argue that the solution is the hiring of more skilled staff to handle the massive amounts of data being thrown at analytics, a fact which Woollacott disregards, simply because there arent any more analysts out there.

Automation, argues the CEO, will leave the analysts free to do the important work, the work where they will make the most positive impact for the business. Using the analogy that analysts come on board to solve problems, the surgeon comes on board to cut, not to push the patient from the ward into the theatre and wash them down, the CEO argued that it is imperative that automation is deployed to cut the shackles of the most skilled staff.

More data is coming with IoT, so technologies that can close that decision loop are really going to help. You are not going to replace analysts, but it is really going to free up time for them to actually do some analytical work, and have machines do some of the lesser things, while they focus on the crown jewels type problems.

Hitting his point home, Woollacott conjured up two images one at the turn of the century, of a man building a Morgan car by hand, with the other a present day Toyota factory in Japan. The Toyota factory, with automation on side, was able to match the lifetime output of cars achieved by the turn of the century car builder in mere minutes.

We are up to the point of industrialising cybersecurity and thats really what automation is going to do. It is going to automate processes that are currently done by hand.

Showing confidence in the abilities of automation, Woollacott said: By introducing a level of automation to a process you are delivering a known, measured repeatable process. Once you are satisfied the automation works, you are going to have a much higher quality outcome.

To manage a group of people who are all doing things differently makes it difficult to know exactly what you are doing at any one point the CEO told CBR. Automation, Woollacott countered, would not only save analysts vital time and enable their skills to be utilised elsewhere, but it would eliminate human error, further improving efficiency.

Woollacotts sentiments highlight a little talked about topic in the much talked about Fourth Industrial Revolution that of cyber security. As is seen in other industries, the Fourth Industrial Revolution looks to transform cyber security processes through automation and smart tech like machine learning. We are, as Woollacott argues, on the cusp of the industrialisation of cyber security.

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Why automation is key for the future of cyber security - Computer Business Review

Ever feel as though the joy has been sucked from your job? The once fun, creative aspects of your marketing role the things you signed up for in the first place are now handed off to data specialists, algorithms and machines. Technology is on its inevitable march and you are starting to feel as obsolete as the old fax machine in the corner of the office

This scenario may seem overly pessimistic, but it is one that more and more marketers are confronting as automation seeps into every facet of their jobs. In the space of a few years programmatic marketing has gone from a niche, hi-tech concept to a commonly understood practice that companies are scrambling to deploy to achieve better, more efficient targeting. Machine learning is advancing all the time and artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way marketers do everything from data capture to campaign messaging.

So does this age of digital automation signal the end of human-generated creativity? A sweep of opinions across the marketing community shows divergent views on the future of creativity, but broad acceptance that the way ideas are taken to market is changing post-haste.

READ MORE:The future of creativity in an automated world

Former HSBC head of marketing Philip Mehl was unequivocal when he argued that marketing is a data challenge now and that the pursuit of true creativity in marketing is all but dead. On the other hand, YouTubes Richard Waterworth pointed to the grey area between the twin pillars of creativity and automation and the need for marketers to continue viewing certain aspects of their role as more of an art than a science. Human imagination remains vital to retaining brand magic, he argued.

In a sense both marketers are right. Given the plethora of consumer-facing technologies and media channels that exist, it is clear that brands are now competing first and foremost on how quickly and efficiently they can reach the right customers. In that context it is easy to see how creativity could become a secondary issue.

READ MORE:Rise of the machinesAre robots after your job?

Yet brands also need to hit their targets with the right messaging, and it is here that human empathy remains vitally important, even if AI technology one day achieves human-like emotional sophistication. Marketing is a holistic business function, not a zero-sum game of data, targets and messages, and it will always require people to think creatively about a brands larger place in the world and the strategy required to connect with human beings.

Of course, marketing departments and the skill sets within them need to adapt to the age of automation. But business leaders also need to ensure that as their companies automate processes, they allow their employees the space to think for themselves and express themselves creatively. The brands that succeed in getting the balance right will be those that thrive in the future.

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Brands must retain their empathy as automation accelerates - Marketing Week

Todays information technologies big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, and embedded computing (the so-called Internet of things) are transforming every industry and raising widespread concerns about job losses and economic inequality. Analysts differ on whether the issue is about jobs, tasks or work activities; they disagree on the extent of automation; and theyre not sure how long it will take.

Even the conservative forecasts are bleak. McKinsey and Company estimates that existing technologies could eventually automate about half the activities that people get paid nearly $15 trillion to do globally. This amounts to 1.2 billion full-time equivalent jobs (FTEs), of which 61 million are located in the US. If we apply a 10 percent rule of thumb our population is about one-tenth that of the US this could mean 6 million Canadian FTEs are at risk: equivalent to one-third of our workforce.

Should we worry? Likely not, say optimists (including McKinsey). Demographic trends are about to produce a shortage of human labour. The productivity and GDP growth associated with automation will not arrive any time soon, the optimists argue. And the full effects of job displacement will take several decades to unfold. In the meantime, humans should learn to manage and complement smart machines and do the sorts of things that only people can do.

The pessimists, on the other hand, say it wont be that easy. Tomorrows jobs will be insufficient in number, inferior in quality and badly paid. We must address the impacts of net growth in unemployment, underemployment, precarious jobs, and economic inequality, they say.

But there is an elephant in the room that no one is talking about. The focus on labour substitution in Canada and everywhere else vastly underestimates the breadth and numbers of at-risk jobs.

Labour substitution relates to the replacement of humans (e.g., car insurance sales representatives) by machines (e.g., car insurance sales apps.). But innovations dont just automate jobs and tasks. They can also make them functionally irrelevant or economically unviable. Its not just about labour substitution: its also about labour obsolescence.

Take the transportation sector. Soon a handful of global firms, such as Uber, may be the dominant providers of automated mobility (transportation) services, provided on demand. Many Canadians will refrain from owning vehicles, which sit unused over 95 percent of the time. They will reap huge cost savings, including over $1,000 per year on car insurance. On-demand, automated mobility, if adopted widely, will yield enormous environmental, safety, health, accessibility, financial and other benefits.

But global automated mobility companies wont buy personal car insurance. Some will self-insure. Others will cut big deals with big insurance firms. Demand for car insurance will plummet. Car insurance jobs wont just decrease as a result of labour substitution. They will become obsolete.

Changes like this have happened throughout history. A disruptive technology innovation facilitates business model innovations that transform entire industries. This results in old jobs (or tasks) becoming irrelevant or economically unviable. The changes also generate demand for new occupations and skills. But the balance these days is typically negative.

Online advertising, viewed from a labour substitution perspective, is the automation of print media ad advertising jobs. This is true in a minor way. But, for the most part, online advertising made those advertising jobs obsolete. More important, online advertising contributed to the collapse of print publications, eliminating or reducing the market value of all sorts of jobs, in areas ranging from home delivery to investigative journalism. Canadas production of newsprint, printing and writing paper declined by half over the 2005-15, and jobs went with it. These losses occurred at dizzying speed, belying the view that the changes would take many decades.

Rather than look exclusively at labour substitution to understand the impact of technology on jobs, we must define and analyze changes that affect changing labour demand in the extended ecosystem (or the business web), inside and outside a core sector. The result of this analysis is often a combination of job creation, job destruction and job displacement.

Changes that will result in labour obsolescence include:

To measure the size of this problem, I identified automotive ecosystem jobs and subsectors using the 2011 Census. Based on this initial assessment, business models built around self-driving vehicles will pose big job risks for 1.1 million Canadians over the coming decades. Half a million of these, again according to the 2011 Census, are professional drivers who face the prospect of labour substitution. They include transport truck drivers; delivery, courier and mail workers; and taxi/limousine drivers. (On-demand drivers for Uber and the like were not counted in the 2011 census.) For the remaining majority (600,000 jobs police; and insurance, auto service/body shop, dealership/distribution/rental/leasing, manufacturing and gas station workers), the main challenge isnt labour substitution, its functional obsolescence.

The automotive ecosystem is but one of many ecosystems. Similar changes are occurring across the economy in agriculture, natural resources, retail/distribution, professional services and many other sectors. In every case, labour obsolescence will exacerbate the challenges of labour substitution.

Clearly, we must get more creative if we are to understand our labour market challenges (and opportunities). We must face up to the likelihood that a new economy one with fewer good jobs and lower pay is upon us. And we must act now to minimize and mitigate the impact on Canadians. We owe it to our kids.

This article is part of the The Changing Nature of Workspecial feature.

Photo:AP Photo/Eric Risberg/The Canadian Press

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The automation elephant in the room - Policy Options (registration)

BARCELONA, SpainMobile World Congress 2017 provided a glimpse into how automation is currently enabled by the internet of things, and, down the line, will be further emboldened by 5G networks. Use cases ranging from lights out manufacturing to driverless trucking promise a future where common tasks will be turned over to software-controlled systems.

What wasnt highlighted, or brought into clear focus at the show, is what that means for the global workforce. Marcus Wheldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs, summed up the vision of automation a few months ago during a keynote address at the SCTE/IBSE Cable Tec Expo in Philadelphia: One of the reasons were excited about the future is we think the future is nothing like today. Were going to build a new network architecture. The point of the future is still about entertaining people, but its equally about changing our world by instrumenting everything. You can automate all mundane tasks. Its to create time. My first task is to create time.

So thats a summary of the near-philosophical vision. Now, Ill summarize what is, to me, the biggest problem. What about the billions of people who spent their time doing those mundane tasks that are now automated? Building on that, if the overarching goal of the telecommunications industry is to monetize the creation of time, whats the industrys responsibility, if any, to those people? To ask it another way, if youre the company or industry that displaces a huge part of the workforce, do you have a socioeconomic duty to lead the broader discussion around how these foundational shifts will impact us all?

Lets take a look at autonomous trucking, which will depend on wireless telecommunications technologies, as an example. Major manufacturers including Volvo, Scania and Daimler last year cooperated on the European Truck Platooning Challenge, which saw fleets of self-driving trucks arrive in the Netherlands from locations in Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Belgium. The trucks, overseen by a human backup, used Wi-Fi connected sensors, processors and radios to communicate, with the lead truck sending its actions to the following vehicles, which would mimic the machinations. This concept would revolutionize how goods move through supply chains. Fewer drivers could cover more ground in less time, the sheer physics of platooning could cut down of fuel consumption, and traffic congestion could be eased as a function of how close together the trucks are positioned.

Heres the downsidein May 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tallied 1,678,280 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers earning a mean annual wage of $42,500. Extend the same concept to light truck or delivery services drivers, and thats another 826,510 jobs that earn an average of $34,080 per year. Expand it again to include taxi drivers and chauffeurs and theres another 180,960 jobs producing an average of $26,070 per year. From just one part of one vertical in one country, thats 2.6 million jobs that spread more than $100 billion per year into the larger economy.

I had the opportunity to speak with Susan Welsh de Grimaldo of Strategy Analytics in Barcelona during MWC. She recalled, on her way to the venue, she was talking with her cab driver and mentioned the prevalence of autonomous vehicles on the show floor. Hes like, Wait a minute. What does that mean for my job? she said. Ive also heard about job creation opportunities. I also heard a lot about, even within telcos, retooling their own skill sets. A lot of the skills people have to do today, with all the transition on the network to software-defined networking and NFV and things like that happening, a lot of those tools and skills will be legacy. People are going to lose jobs. Will they have the right skills for the new jobs that are available?

A major trend in telco, driven by the need for SDN and NFV, is what Welsh de Grimaldo referred to as retooling. Margaret Chiosi, distinguished network architect at AT&T Labs, in an interview last year, called it reskilling. AT&T, with its ECOMP initiatives, is a leader in the push toward software control, which often comes with an organizational shift to whats commonly called a devops model. As Chiosi explained, It would be great if all the operators improved their software development skill sets. This would help accelerate the realization of the SDN-enabled cloud. Because of this need, AT&T is reskilling our workforce: from hardware to software skills; wireline to IP and wireless skills; from data reporters to data scientists. This is a company wide initiative and we are providing a number of ways for our employees to build on top of the skills they already have and gain new ones.

But this isnt an easy thing to do. On the sidelines of MWC, Ann Hatchell, vice president of network marketing for Amdocs, said that, based on her conversations with operator customers, I think probably the number one pain point, it always sort of comes down to this ability to transition their own workforce. Virtualization is a cultural challenge. Its a challenge just in terms of the resources that have been dedicated to lots of functions. Many [operators]have their own training programs to start bringing these organizations together. Its interesting because, as the technologies converge across multiple domains, that means addressing these challenges.

The point here is that the telecom industry, which is, in many ways, creating the need for massive retooling and reskilling in every other industry, is having trouble accomplishing the same thing. So where does that leave the long-haul truckers, delivery drivers and cabbies?

In a video interview with Welsh de Grimaldo and Monica Paolini, founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting, Paolini commented: You can resist change but that doesnt work. You need to embrace change. You need to say, Whats the best you can do out of it. Picking up on the fate of cabbies, she said, If you really look at how many cab drivers youre going to have today and 20 years from now, thats really the long way to look at the question. We need to just look at the big picture and understand what is it as a societywe need to do to adapt to that change but not resist it. The connectivity is just going to be the fabric that unites it all. Its good and its good news for the industry.

Theres more good news too. There are eyes on the big picture and theres time to address it. Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, in a recent interview with Quartz, examined the workforce aspects of turning manual processes over to algorithms. Right now, the human worker does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level. Gates said automation would free up labor, which, in turn, could be used to improve elder services, education and other things where human empathy and understanding are still very, very uniqueSo if you can take the labor that used to do the thing automation replaces and financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that person go off and do these other things, then youre net ahead. Heres a transcript of that fascinating interview.

As to the timing, It wont happen overnight, Welsh de Grimaldo said. I dont think we see a lot of these jobs go away real quickly. So I think theres time to prepare, but I think its time to really start thinking through as citizens, as government, as associations like GSMA, what role do we all play?

Id like to start a dialogue with our community here at RCR Wireless News to get some insight into the answer to that question: What role do we all play? Contact me at skinney@rcrwireless.com and follow me on Twitter @seankinneyRCR.

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As automation displaces the workforce, what's our responsibility? - RCR Wireless News

March 6, 2017

STOCKTON For more than 40 years, robots have been at work in U.S. factories doing mainly routine, repetitive work. While the number of manufacturing jobs has gone down in this country, productivity has gone up.

Here in the Central Valley, automation has been important in distribution centers, such as Amazon.com, where robots often retrieve items from shelves for shipping, for example.

Everything from wrapping pallets to self-programming robots, said San Joaquin Partnership CEO Michael Ammann who recently saw the latest in manufacturing and distribution center automation on display at a Southern California trade show.

For example, vision software can now inspect everything from sheet metal to water bottle seals much more quickly and accurately than humans can.

A lot of unskilled parts of the production process or inspection are going away, Ammann said.

There is disagreement among economists about how many jobs will be lost to automation and other technology such as 3D printing, driverless cars and artificial intelligence.

Economist Tom Pogue of the Center for Business and Policy Research at University of the Pacific notes that Amazons automation reinvented e-commerce, which brought thousands of jobs to the Central Valley but other jobs were lost in other retail sectors. Counting the winners and losers is complicated.

While we have those jobs at Amazon, thinking about it in the broader context, how many jobs arent necessarily just being lost, but how many jobs arent being created in regular brick and mortar stores? he said. You see all the boxes being dropped off at your house and your neighbors house. Its real, that transformation of shopping.

However, most experts seem to agree that work itself is changing and workers need to prepare themselves and adapt.

A Pew Research study released last October analyzed Bureau of Labor data and found that employment is rising faster in jobs that require higher levels of preparation more education, training and experience. In fact, the number of such jobs increased from 49 million in 1980 to 83 million in 2015.

The question is, educated how? And trained for what?

You almost have to fall back on rules of thumb: if a person needs to be involved, then a person needs to be involved, Pogue said. So, things like nursing, the interpersonal services become obvious areas, particularly when theyre relatively high-paid.

Two researchers at the Darden School of Business at University of Virginia have been thinking a lot about what the future holds for workers.

Katherine Ludwig and Ed Hess have written a new book on surviving the changing jobs landscape called Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.

McKinsey and Company did a study and found that if current technology was applied widespread, then a majority of jobs that people are currently paid to do would be automated, said Ludwig in a telephone interview.

Ludwig and Hess cite research from the University of Oxford that says 47 percent of American jobs will be lost to automation in the next 15 years. Artificial intelligence and automation have already made their way into other sectors that many people thought were safe, such as law, accounting and medicine.

They say people who can change their mindset about work will be able to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

It means a change in what the humans will be needed to do, Ludwig said. Its things that computers and robots and artificial intelligence wont be able to do.

Many of those jobs will involve engaging socially and emotionally with other people, in nursing jobs, for example.

Ludwig and Hess call the change in mindset the new smart and soon people wont be measured by how much they know but by the quality of their thinking, their ability to be open-minded, to collaborate and to be a lifelong learner.

So, its a whole different view of what it means to be a smart, successful person, Ludwig said.

Ammann believes opportunities exist for people who are willing to adapt. But they need to embrace technology and seek out training. He believes people who dont finish high school will be vulnerable.

My concern is not so much getting people to train for this or updating their skills, its the folks who dont have any kind of threshold and just seem to think that theres going to be some kind of unskilled position for them, Ammann said. We all have to progress. Thats all there is to it.

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Automation and robot-proofing your career - Central Valley Business Journal

When it Comes to the Economy, Automation is Buzzing

The rise of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have put us on the brink of a new automation age, projected to last from 2015 to 2085, according to McKinsey. Unlike the type of automation we witnessed during the Industrial Revolution, during which the steam engine replaced routine physical work activities, the changes we can expect from this new transformative period will center around cognitive capabilities, like consequential decision-making, tacit judgments, and sensing emotion. These activities have traditionally required a college degree, which is why the world is now alarmed at the broad swaths of the job market at risk of becoming obsolete.

Clearly, there are unparalleled productivity gains from this new type of intelligent automation. But what are the implications for customer-facing functions like customer care and support? And what limits should be placed on how much automation is allowed in these spaces?

Automation: a Friend or Foe?

According to Fast Company, automation is expected to eliminate 6% of US jobs in the next five years. Other observers and experts, like IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, have stated that while AI will reduce jobs in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, the corresponding increase in programming and development roles will lead to net job creation. As far as customer service agents are concerned, chatbots probably pose the biggest risk to job loss. But like Rometty, I feel that the effects of automation are not so black-and-white.

We could reframe the threat of automation as an opportunity for augmentation-Harvard Business Review

My prediction is that, as customers continue to demonstrate their preference for effortless, mobile-friendly channels like messaging apps over phone calls, the model for customer service will likely shift towards a smaller number of specialized, highly trained, insourced customer care agentswho, with support from technology like machine learning, auto-tagging and intelligent distribution of actionable conversions (also known as PLAY), will be able to handle a larger volume of customers inquiries.

Webcast, March 15th: How to Scale Upmarket with Enterprise Field Sales

Whereas traditional customer service staff often function on the level of rote memorizationreading from outdated, standardized scriptsthe ability to interface with various intricate technologies will actually boost the value of todays social customer service agents on the job market.

Partial Phase-Out: What Automation Will and Wont Change

In part, some of the panic over automation is a natural reaction to the way its been framed. When we talk about the new automation age, its important to recognize that individual activities are a better unit of measurement than entire occupations. As McKinsey points out, rather than replacing jobs outright, automation will often mean that certain tasks become more efficient.

Following the framework detailed in the above chart, we can say that customer service involves a mix of data collection, data processing, and stakeholder interactions. According to McKinseys analysis, the latter activityin which the agent speaks to the customer directlyis less susceptible to automation than the others. Why is that?

The answer, in part, is that modern consumers are simply fed up with the type of non-personalized, synthetic resolution they receive from call centers, and need to feel like they are interacting with a human who can speak to them about their issues in a way thats natural, relatable and down-to-earthespecially if they are upset or already frustrated with attempting to fix their issue.

So chatbots will not necessarily make social customer service agents obsolete, but will work with them as a kind of personal assistant, serving as the initial, high-level touch point of requests, and escalating issues when they become more complex. A perfect example of this workflow can be illustrated by Twitters DM Dispatcher by Conversocial, a functionality that prompts customers to proactively provide details on the service issue at the first point of contact, eliminating the initial back-and-forth between agents and customers to gather more context. And, as these technologies enable customers to get even complex issues solved in-the-moment, at the touch of a button, more customer care volume will shift away from phone calls and into messaging.

The Tradeoffs of Automation

According to McKinsey, technical feasibility is just one of the components that needs to be addressed when predicting the impact of automation, but not the only relevant factor. Another to consider is the side effects beyond the cost reduction derived from labor substitution. For instance, what would happen to customer satisfaction scores if service interactions are completely automated and robotized? Are companies jeopardizing the incremental value of increased retention and satisfaction by focusing too much on cost reduction? There must be a balance.

Another factor to consider is regulatory and social-acceptance issues, such as the degree to which machines are acceptable in any particular setting. A robot may, in theory, be able to replace some of the functions of a nurse, for instance. But for the time being, most patients would reject fully robotic treatment, in favor of an actual health care professional, capable of answering complex questions and handling emotional situations. Likewise, in customer service, people will still expect a degree of human contact when it comes to the more time-sensitive, emotional issuessuch as when a customer needs to cancel a stolen credit card, or change a flight at the last minute.

The Future is Humanity at Scale

Unleashing automations full potential requires people and technology to work together. And although our initial instinct is to resist the upheaval of potential job loss, an integrated approach that makes life easier and effortless for customers will encourage them to turn to social, messaging and digital channels to resolve more and more of their conflicts, ultimately creating more and new future jobs in the social customer service sector.

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Welcome to the New Automation Age - Business 2 Community