Telemarketing
This form of marketing will fade due to automation, and also because it is often annoying and intrusive.
In 2017, the Guardian published an article predicting which jobs would disappear. Telemarketing had a 99% chance to be fully automated in 15 years.
Nearly 70% of B2B buyers go online to search for business solutions instead of waiting for a call. Today, if you call up a prospect with an offer, the chances of making a sale are less than 5%. The majority will hang up the phone.
There are still over 8 thousand telemarketing companies in the USA, but the effectiveness of most of them is questionable. Besides, their business is changing from offering products to services like credit collection.
Therefore, instead of a telemarketing operator interrupting your dinner to offer you a new credit card, soon we will only receive a call if we forget to pay for the credit card company.
Staffed retail
As with telemarketing, staffed retail will also fade because of increasing automation.
Take a look at the picture of any supermarket 10 years ago and compare it with the same place right now. Chances are that the number of self-checkouts at least doubled, reducing the need for human cashiers. As a result, it’s been estimated that the self-serve kiosk industry will be worth $34 billion (£27.5bn) by 2023.
While the demise of the cashier is not a secret (it is one of the 4 professions that will disappear in the near future), other retail-associated jobs are at risk, like sellers or cleaners.
Places like the automated stores from Amazon Go will be everywhere. In fact, Amazon themselves declared they plan to expand from the current 30 non-staffed stores to over 3000. This plan, coming from a company that earned $300 million just by developing a button, looks plausible.
Customers who have the Amazon Go app just need to enter the store, grab whatever they want and walk out with the items. Later, their account is charged.
Of course, few retail sectors will remain staffed. While people do not need help to buy their groceries, niche industries like luxury stores will opt for the personal touch of sales assistants.
Staffed banking
A few months ago, I asked all my friends in our chat group when was the last time they visited a physical bank agency. Of the 8 respondents (yes, not an enormous sample size, I know), only one answered less than 1 month. On average, the last time they stepped into a bank was 3 to 4 months ago.
Ask yourself the same question. Ask your friends and family too. There are exceptional cases still requiring the physical presence in a bank agency, like a few businesses or people who are not tech-savvy enough, but they are becoming a diminutive minority.
Finance leaders warned that those in customer service, middle and back-office roles likely will lose their places to computers soon. IHS Markit estimates that 1.3 million bank workers in the United States will be affected, and 500,000 in the United Kingdom.
A report from GP Bullhound revealed that 91% of people prefer to use an app than go into a branch. That includes me and most of my social circle. Unless you feel some peculiar pleasure by waiting in lines (I will not judge), I bet you prefer to make bank payments remotely instead of driving to the local branch.