AI exposure: Telephone Operators
Provide information by accessing alphabetical, geographical, or other directories. Assist customers with special billing requests, such as charges to a third party and credits or refunds for incorrectly dialed numbers or bad connections. May handle emergency calls and assist children or people with physical disabilities to make telephone calls.
Reading this score
computed45.2% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Telephone Operators at the 82th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.5 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.
No single friction dominates this occupation. The strongest is context at 1.32 out of 3 and the weakest is accountability at 0.68, which is a narrow spread. Where nothing structural stands in the way, exposure tracks capability almost directly, and capability is the thing that changes every quarter.
The most exposed thing this job does is Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer..., at 90.0%. The least is Provide relay service for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, at 0.0%. A gap of 90.0% 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 office and administrative support occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 55.9% across the group's 51 roles, with 40 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 14 tasks, 12 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 2 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take capability alone, since there is little structural friction here to slow adoption once a system can do the work. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Task by task
14 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information. | 90.0% | 10.0% | 0.0% | 4.22 | exposed |
| Update directory information. | 86.7% | 13.3% | 0.0% | 4.12 | exposed |
| Keep records of calls placed and received, and of related toll charges. | 86.7% | 13.3% | 0.0% | 3.80 | exposed |
| Provide assistance for customers with special billing requests. | 66.7% | 33.3% | 0.0% | 3.88 | exposed |
| Operate telephone switchboards and systems to advance and complete connections, including those for local, long distance, pay telephone, mobile, person-to-person, and emergency calls. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.45 | exposed |
| Promote company products, services, and savings plans when appropriate. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 3.65 | exposed |
| Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail. | 52.1% | 10.4% | 37.5% | 4.03 | exposed |
| Suggest and check alternate spellings, locations, or listing formats to customers lacking details or complete information. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 4.12 | exposed |
| Observe signal lights on switchboards, and dial or press buttons to make connections. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.61 | exposed |
| Operate paging systems or other systems of bells or buzzers to notify recipients of incoming calls. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.54 | exposed |
| Monitor automated systems for placing collect calls and intervene for a callers needing assistance. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.19 | exposed |
| Interrupt busy lines if an emergency warrants. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 3.94 | exposed |
| Offer special assistance to persons such as those who are unable to dial or who are in emergency situations. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.00 | untouched |
| Provide relay service for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.82 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 1 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery 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.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 2.54 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.25 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 1.11 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.68 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.32 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.93 | 0-3 |
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.