Service and sales workers · code 5244
Contact centre salespersons
AI can make the calls now. That's why this job scores as it does.
Booking appointments for sales reps is a task AI could do most of, and it could take a fair chunk of six more. Only reporting back on competitors and customer issues is mostly out of its reach.
What they actually do (and what else they get called)
Contact centre salespersons contact existing and prospective customers, using the telephone or other electronic communications media, to promote goods and services, obtain sales and arrange sales visits. They may work from a customer contact centre or from non-centralized premises. Tasks include - (a) promoting goods and services by telephone or electronic mail, following scripts and working from lists of contacts; (b) creating interest in goods and services, and seeking a sale or an agreement to see sales representatives; (c) arranging processing and dispatch of goods and services, information kits and brochures to customers; (d) arranging appointments for sales representatives; (e) recording notes for follow-up action and updating marketing databases to reflect changes to the status of each customer; (f) reporting competitor activities and issues raised by contacts for attention by managers; (g) maintaining statistics of calls made and successes achieved; (h) submitting periodic reports on telemarketing activities and results. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Call centre salesperson - Customer contact centre salesperson - Internet salesperson - Telemarketer - Telemarketing salesperson Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Contact centre information clerk - 4222
- call centre agent
Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.
39 / 100
Highly exposed to AI
AI could do much of the everyday work. The job doesn’t disappear, but in five years you might not recognise it.
Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.
The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 4
420 of 427 for holding up against AI
Not quite your week? Make it yours ↓
Why this score?
The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 61.2 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 61.2 = 38.8.
That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 4”: The ILO’s highest group: nearly every task is affected.
This job rates 16.6 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
Man v Bot · compare
Who holds up better?
Contact centre salespersons 39
vGo on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.
Man v Bot
Where the bot helps, and where the human wins
Bot
What AI takes
The routine stuff. You may not miss it.
- Scripted calls.
- Booking appointments.
- Call records and reports.
Man
What people still do better
Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.
- Complex sales conversations.
- Building trust.
- Handling objections.
Both
What's arriving
New work that only exists because the AI does.
- AI voice agents.
- Rules on automated calls.
- Account management roles.
Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.
Meet your two rivals
They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.
The AI
Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.
Threat level: High
81 could do without you
It could take over a lot of this job on its own. It could help with 76 of 100.
The robot
The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.
How much it matters here: Lower
17 how hands-on
Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.
So could a robot do the physical part?
Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.
Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 10 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.
hands-on
and cramped
Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on
The small print
They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.
From O*NET, matched to one US job .
finger skill 16 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 5.5 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50
estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement
The job, task by task
Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.
AI's favourite task here scores 76, against an average of 61. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.
- 76
Arranging appointments for sales representatives
High - 72
Maintaining statistics of calls made and successes achieved
Medium - 65
Submitting periodic reports on telemarketing activities and results.
Medium - 63
Promoting goods and services by telephone or electronic mail, following scripts and working from lists of contacts
Medium - 59
Recording notes for follow-up action and updating marketing databases to reflect changes to the status of each customer
Medium - 56
Arranging processing and despatch of goods and services, information kits and brochures to customers
Medium - 55
Creating interest in goods and services, and seeking a sale or agreement to see sales representatives
Medium - 44
Reporting competitor activities and issues raised by contacts for attention by managers
Low
8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's
from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use
New · the weekly task audit
Your week, your score
The score above assumes telesales workers spend the same time on every task. You don't. Slide each task to how much of your week it takes, and we'll re-weight the same ILO ratings to fit your job.
- Some
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- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
Your score
39 / 100
Same as the job as a whole, so far.
Move the sliders to make it yours.
The job as a whole: 39 / 100
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Sidekick or replacement?
A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.
- AI helps you
- 76
- AI does it for you
- 81
Replacement wins, by 5 points. That's rare.
How good a match is this?
One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.
estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 6393
Meanwhile, in real life…
Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?
Out of every 100 conversations
worked through it together handed it over
The small print
Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.47% of the conversations.
These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.
observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product
So, should telesales workers be worried?
Short answer: expect big changes. Better to steer them than be steered by them.
Yes, this is one of the most exposed jobs. Arranging appointments is rated High; call statistics, reports, scripted selling, notes, dispatch and generating interest are Medium; reporting competitors is Low. AI voice agents and automated outreach take on scripted calls.
Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.
Where this job could lead
None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →
How are the neighbours doing?
There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” family, averaging 75. This one is below the family average.
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