Competition. So your competitors are also able to automate the supply chain. So you have to too. To be competitive. Therefore all of the people doing backend

Competition. So your competitors are also able to automate the supply chain. So you have to too. To be competitive. Therefore all of the people doing backend tasks with spreadsheets and 'copy/paste' of addresses, sku codes etc. get to be made redundant. The computer does most of it with the process being customer driven as much as possible. However this is not where the story ends. To be competitive in this new online marketplace where reviews are everything, there is a new requirement for skilled customer service agents, able to do the things that were not automated, i.e. the things that need customer interaction, product knowledge and skill. There is a need for the language support, e.g. French/German/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese and more if selling into the E.U. So now instead of having a room full of data entry people doing dull work there is now a room full of people doing thinking person work, where skill and independent thought is helpful. These new staff need to be treated differently, they can't be hired and fired ad-hoc, they need to be paid properly and given opportunities to grow with the company. Because you now have intelligent staff it is also possible to involve them in more things, so being able to compete in foreign language markets becomes much more possible as there is now in-house translation facilities from someone customer focused and with product knowledge. When speaking with customers the 'intelligent human agents' will have a more insightful interaction, so less 'lonely' than when everything was manual and not automated. The agents will essentially be dealing with new edge cases, not routine interactions, e.g. to get address details from a customer. Because the 'intelligent customer service agents' are creating value they are not a cost in the way the previous 'data entry agents' were. It is not all doom and gloom, there will be winning companies that will thrive by putting the customer first and hiring better people that are paid better.