For a year I did not automate my colleagues in Customer Service because I liked them and knew they needed income. When they outsourced everyone but the team lea

For a year I did not automate my colleagues in Customer Service because I liked them and knew they needed income. When they outsourced everyone but the team lead I had a chat with the team lead and we decided that automation was the way to deliver timely customer service and set to work. The hardest part was the spec. Simple and obvious changes to forms, message strings and processes were arrived at by my colleague teaching me her job. We worked collaboratively and now have happy customers. Had I started this task earlier with the old team present then I doubt I would have done such a good job. The collaboration would not have been there, it could even have been hostile. Due to the outsourcing we got a break to work on the same side. For our team lead we have better job satisfaction as everything is excellent with no backlog. Now we do not need people to fill out forms and do other brainless stuff we find that we need to get more skilled and differently motivated staff for the job. The old team are not suited to the new work that is there so I guess that is a problem for them but the new hires will be paid a lot better. I think 4 proper jobs is better than a dozen pointless jobs. We can also scale the business now without fear of recall or late shipping nightmares sinking the company. If we scale the business 3x we will be having the larger team again, all paid better. I don't see a magic AI system doing the real change, putting people like me out of a job even though I am the first to admit that most of my work is simple stuff.