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.