On Monday, as the global financial markets crashed, my boyfriend sent me a string of texts. He’s a relatively new investor, and his losses, he said, were piling up. But that’s not all.

“Omg,” he wrote, “the robots are out of control.”

A few weeks earlier, he had decided to try out one of the new internet services that offers automated investing and wealth management. Called “robo-advisers,” the services, like Betterment, Wealthfront, and FutureAdvisor, use algorithms to manage clients’ investments.

The account had been easy enough to set up—skim a few questions, assess a few options, and voilà—all within a few minutes from the comfort of our couch. But, on Monday, as the Dow tumbled more than 1000 points, he watched as the service rapidly rearranged his account on the fly. “I’ve been constantly refreshing,” he texted, “and it’s a roller coaster.”

He was startled, concerned, and a little bit confused. But the service was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. Betterment, Wealthfront, and FutureAdvisor say their services not only take the headache out of investing, but offer real opportunities when the market dips. The question is how well this will work—and how well the services can retain their clients—in the long-term, especially when the market takes a turn for the worst, or, one day, heads into a recession.

Business as Usual

According to Dan Egan, the director of behavioral finance and investments at Betterment, the whole idea is that a robot adviser will protect clients from short-term worry, and monitor investments so they don’t have to. And indeed, he says, this is how most people use Betterment.

Over the weekend, he explains, 83 percent of users did not check their accounts, even though the market was tumbling. In other words, it was pretty much like any other weekend on the service. Adam Nash, the CEO of Wealthfront, says the same attitude prevails among users on his service. “They’re thinking longterm,” he says “Set it and forget it.”

But should they have been worried? Not according to Egan and Nash. During the market meltdown, they say, their services worked to protect users from harm—and even identify new opportunities. For instance, these services offer what’s called tax loss harvesting, where they will automatically replace a security that has experienced a loss with a similar one, allowing investors to offset their taxes, meaning investors may be able to account for the losses by claiming a lower income on their taxes. (Which was what my boyfriend witnessed.)

“It’s days like today where automated services really shine,” Nash told us on Monday.

The Human Touch

The downside, critics argue, is that when the market is falling, investors get emotional. They may need an even-keeled adviser to, well, protect them from themselves. “Financial advisors have more control over what their clients could do,” says Aite Group senior analyst Sophie Schmitt. “[With robo-advising services], there’s a danger for investors to panic and do something that may not be in their best interest, which is selling right away.”

Morningstar equity analyst Michael Wong says that investors should not underestimate the value of having a real human to talk to. Traditional financial advisors, he says, act like coaches to mediate the emotional impulses of investors when the market looks like it could crash.

“There’s a definite difference,” Wong says, when I ask him about a human adviser versus, say, an email or pop-up message. “If reading lines of text could allay the effects of human emotion, everyone would be a pretty great investor.” It’s not just about the advice itself, Wong says, but trust. “Trust mainly comes when you build on a personal level not from a website.”

But Nash and Egan don’t think their clients are missing out. Both say that they attract self-selecting clients who want a more digital experience, and who are signing up to meet longterm goals. They won’t become victim to swings in the market, because they won’t be making decisions—the services will be. “Humans are not really good at predicting volatile markets,” Nash explains. “Computers aren’t great at this either. But computers don’t get frazzled, and they literally execute what they’re supposed to.”

Clients do get advice in emails, blog posts, or messages within the services. And any especially panicked users can call the companies’ customer services teams.

For its part, however, Betterment has found that the key to keeping clients happy has been knowing when to communicate, and knowing when to choose not to. “We do not issue outbound conversations,” Egan says. “We don’t think it’s good to force users to be scared. We wait for them to log in, and we give them a quick message, explaining our view on things.” The onus, then, is on the client to be informed.

Doubling Down

While major financial institutions continue to watch these financial upstarts (and competitors), Wong says that the companies do, in fact, provide an alternative for many people who otherwise might not have access to a financial adviser. Many people, after all, can’t afford the human touch—or might not have the balance amount needed to get the same level of daily attention elsewhere. And so far, these services seem to be performing well.

That could change, of course, especially if the economy takes a turn for the worst. But a recession could also, ultimately, prove the services’ worth. “If the robo-firms are able to successfully serve the market in a downturn, that might be further proof that the human adviser’s job has become automated,” says Sean McDermott, a fintech analyst at Corporate Insight.

And, my boyfriend? In the end, he shrugged and added a little extra to his robo-advised account.