The recent approval of the Customer Service Law bill (better known as the SAC Law, in Spanish) marks a milestone in customer service regulation in Spain. After more than four years of parliamentary proceedings, the Congress of Deputies has given the green light, by 179 votes in favor and 33 against, to the ruling presented by the Social Rights and Consumer Affairs Committee.
For contact centers, and in particular for organizations with customer service, debt collection, BPO, telecommunications, and utility functions, this regulation entails new compliance obligations and, at the same time, opportunities to redefine their service model, quality, and customer experience.
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What is the SAC Law, and why was it passed?
The purpose of the SAC Law is to establish minimum quality standards for customer service provided by companies that offer goods or services of general interest and to strengthen customer rights.
Among the stated objectives are:
- Ensuring that customer service channels are accessible, effective, personalized, and non-discriminatory.
- Regulating maximum waiting times and complaint resolution deadlines.
- Putting a limit on abusive commercial practices: unsolicited calls (“spam”), automatic contract renewal without notice, hidden prices, fake reviews, etc.
- Adapt customer service to an omnichannel, digitized environment, with special attention to vulnerable groups (the elderly, people with disabilities) and linguistic rights.
The text approved by Congress already includes some amendments requested by contact center industry associations such as AEERC and CEX, but they warn that there are still aspects that could affect the sector’s competitiveness.
Main obligations for contact centers under the SAC Law
For a contact center, whether internal or outsourced, operating under the SAC Law will mean adapting to a series of new standards. The most relevant are:
1. Maximum waiting and service time per person
- The approved article requires that 95% of calls be answered in less than three minutes.
- Likewise, users are granted the right to request to be served by a person (and not just a bot or IVR), and that from that moment on, the wait time does not exceed three minutes.
- This standard requires continuous monitoring of service quality indicators at the contact center.
2. Identification of commercial calls and an end to “spam”
- All companies making commercial calls must use a specific numerical code (telephone prefix) visible to the user, different from the one used for customer service. Otherwise, telecommunications operators are obliged to block them.
- Contracts signed during unsolicited calls will be legally void.
- There is also an obligation to renew the customer’s consent to receive commercial communications every two years.
3. Complaints and resolution
- The deadline for resolving complaints is set at a maximum of 15 business days, and only 5 business days in cases of improper charges.
- Each action must be documented, either in writing or recorded.
- The system must allow for the traceability of the complaint, the assignment of an identification code, and the tracking and closure of the complaint.
4. Personalized service and service for vulnerable groups
- Companies must adapt their service and give priority to elderly or disabled people.
- Large companies must provide service in co-official languages when requested by the customer.
5. Specific numbering systems and service control
- Customer service and commercial activity must use different numbers, which in many cases means abandoning geographic numbers.
- Periodic audits to verify compliance: annual for large companies, biennial for others.
What the SAC Law means for contact centers: challenges, opportunities, and key actions
Challenges for contact centers
- Operational capacity: Answering 95% of calls in less than 3 minutes requires optimizing human resources, technology, staffing, and routing.
- Technological transformation: IVR systems, bots, chatbots, and self-service must be integrated with mechanisms that allow for quick “referral” to human assistance when the customer requires it.
- Quality management and auditing: Systems will be required to monitor wait times, percentage of human assistance, traceability of complaints, compliance with deadlines, etc.
- Cultural and training change: Prioritizing personalized service, access to human agents, and full attention to vulnerable people requires training, protocols, and awareness.
- Additional costs: Adapting platforms, changing numbers, adjusting processes, managing new prefixes, and renewing consent can generate investments that will then be reflected in the income statement if not managed well.
Opportunities for contact centers
- Service differentiation: Complying with the SAC Law can become a competitive advantage: superior quality experience, minimal wait times, and human and personalized attention can increase the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and loyalty.
- Responsible optimization and automation: While the regulation requires human attention, it does not prohibit the use of bots and AI; on the contrary, it requires that the ‘derivative’ to human be feasible, allowing for the efficient reconfiguration of hybrid self-service + agent models.
- Improved image and reputational compliance: A brand that advertises “service in less than 3 minutes” and delivers on that promise gains credibility with customers and regulators.
- Segmentation of interactions: Regulations also require service tailored to vulnerable groups, which encourages the implementation of inclusive customer journey processes, thereby refining the value of data and personalization in the contact center.
- Advanced use of data and analytics: The need to monitor times, complaint resolution, and regulatory compliance is driving BPOs and contact centers to adopt conversational analytics, automatic quality control, and advanced reporting technologies.
Learn more about: Analytics and Automation of Quality Audits
Key actions to anticipate
- Perform a compliance diagnosis: measure current wait times, percentage of human attention, complaint resolution times, numbers used, complaint traceability, etc.
- Review and adapt contact center KPIs to align with legal standards (e.g., calls answered in less than 3 minutes in 95% of cases, percentage of human attention, first contact resolution rate, complaints resolved in 15/5 days).
- Update channels and routing: define when the IVR chatbot should escalate to human attention, ensuring that the wait from that moment never exceeds three minutes.
- Adapt telephone numbering and commercial call identification systems: separate customer service numbers from telemarketing numbers, implement identifying prefixes, block unsolicited commercial calls where appropriate.
- Train the team of agents and supervisors: create protocols for personalized service, recognition of vulnerable people, adapted treatment, and guarantee of co-official languages where applicable.
- Implement or review the complaint management system: generate tracking codes, enable customer traceability, ensure timely resolution, file written/recorded evidence, and review indicators.
- Verify transparency in prices and contracts: ensure that customer communications show the final price with all costs, that automatic renewals are communicated at least 15 days in advance, and that contracts are not signed during unsolicited calls.
- Establish an internal audit plan: prepare systems so that when the law comes into force (and its regulatory development), the company is ready to be audited and prove compliance.
The SAC Law represents a significant leap forward in customer service regulation in Spain, and for contact centers, it brings both challenges and opportunities. For the contact center industry, the key will be to move from mere “regulatory compliance” to a strategy of continuous improvement of the customer experience, supported by technology, data, qualified personnel, and adapted processes.
In short, the contact center of the future will be fast, transparent, accessible, and measurable. Adapting to the SAC Law today means ensuring competitiveness tomorrow.
Find out more about how analytics and AI are helping contact centers comply with the SAC Law by clicking here.