The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 41-9041.00 · Job Zone 2

AI exposure: Telemarketers

Solicit donations or orders for goods or services over the telephone.

Reading this score

computed

Telemarketers sits in the top 0% of every occupation measured. 73.3% of what this job consists of, weighted by how important each task is to the role, is work current AI systems can produce with little standing in the way. Very few occupations score this high. The ones that do tend to share a trait: the output is a document, a calculation or a message, and nobody has to be in a particular room for it to count.

What holds the line here is context. Across this occupation's 12 tasks it averages 1.67 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work depends on knowledge the model cannot hold. Much of this job runs on things that were never written down: what this particular organisation does, what happened last week, what the person across the table actually meant. That context is the barrier, and it erodes as systems are given more access.

The most exposed thing this job does is Schedule appointments for sales representatives to meet with prospective customers or for..., at 93.3%. The least is Deliver prepared sales talks, reading from scripts that describe products or services, to..., at 26.7%. A gap of 66.7% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.

Within sales occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 22 roles in the group is 49.4%, and only 0 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.

What would move this score. Of 12 tasks, 12 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 0 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take systems being given deeper access to the organisation's own records and history, which is already happening. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.

Task by task

12 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Schedule appointments for sales representatives to meet with prospective customers or for customers to attend sales presentations.93.3%6.7%0.0%3.67exposed
Answer telephone calls from potential customers who have been solicited through advertisements.86.7%13.3%0.0%4.43exposed
Contact businesses or private individuals by telephone to solicit sales for goods or services, or to request donations for charitable causes.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.75exposed
Telephone or write letters to respond to correspondence from customers or to follow up initial sales contacts.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.30exposed
Adjust sales scripts to better target the needs and interests of specific individuals.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.45exposed
Obtain names and telephone numbers of potential customers from sources such as telephone directories, magazine reply cards, and lists purchased from other organizations.80.0%20.0%0.0%4.11exposed
Obtain customer information such as name, address, and payment method, and enter orders into computers.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.66exposed
Explain products or services and prices, and answer questions from customers.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.66exposed
Record names, addresses, purchases, and reactions of prospects contacted.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.59exposed
Maintain records of contacts, accounts, and orders.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.56exposed
Conduct client or market surveys to obtain information about potential customers.73.3%26.7%0.0%3.33exposed
Deliver prepared sales talks, reading from scripts that describe products or services, to persuade potential customers to purchase a product or service or to make a donation.26.7%23.3%50.0%4.42exposed

Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.

Where the score comes from

judged

Every task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.

DimensionMeanScale
Capability3.830-4
Embodiment0.080-3
Presence0.540-3
Accountability0.380-3
Context1.670-3
Verification cost0.830-3

What this means in practice

Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.

Occupations either side of this one

The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.

Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.