Currently, most of the complaints that customers filed with Public Administrations have in common the lack of customer service.
For this reason, last June the Spanish Council of Ministers approved the draft bill for the Customer Service Law, which aims to alleviate the deficiencies detected in the provision of this type of service by large companies and thus improve consumer protection to guarantee their rights.
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To whom is this regulation addressed?
This draft law will apply to all companies, public and private, that provide essential services in the Spanish territory (water, supply, transport, financial services…), as well as any company, regardless of the sector with more than 250 workers or with a turnover of more than 50 million euros.
What are the objectives of this law draft?
- Provide a free, efficient, universally accessible, inclusive, non-discriminatory and assessable customer service.
- Indicate the available communication channels in an easy and simple way.
- Facilitate the submission of complaints, claims, incidents or queries, follow-up and receipt of the communication of their resolution.
- Reduce the timeframes in which claims must be resolved.
- Indicate the out-of-court dispute resolution systems to which customers can have access and how they can access them.
Keys to be considered in Customer Service Contact Centers
Among the keys to be taken into account by Contact Centers and which will directly affect them with this new Customer Service Law are the following:
1. Reduction of waiting and complaint resolution times
With this law, waiting times to be attended by telephone in general information, complaint and after-sales services will be limited to 3 minutes. In addition, for those incidents affecting basic continuity services such as electricity, water or gas, it will also be applied.
Once the law is approved, it is established that customer complaint resolution times will have to be reduced from the current 30 working days to 15, with the aim of streamlining services and increasing efficiency.
2. Reporting incidents in basic continuity services.
Basic continuity services, such as water, electricity or gas, will have to report possible incidents, indicating at all times the reason for the problem and, above all, giving an estimated peace of mind for the restoration of said service in less than 2 hours.
This new regulation will oblige large basic supply companies to attend to the needs and concerns of customers at all times, trying to provide a quality customer service.
3. The right to be provided with specialized and personalized attention.
Many customers today complain about the new methods of customer services based on answering machines or robotic systems.
It is for this reason that, thanks to this new bill, the aim is to achieve a personalized and specialized attention where the customer, if he/she so wishes, will be attended by an agent with specialized training, regardless of how the resolution of the incident was initiated.
In this way, the government seeks to make the service as personalized as possible, which represents a new opportunity to build customer loyalty with quality customer service in accordance with their needs.
4. 24-hour customer service channels.
Finally, another of the details included in this new law is that companies offering basic services of general interest should offer a free 24-hour customer service channel, 365 days a year.
Artificial Intelligence solutions to comply with the new rules
This bill, as we indicated, represents a perfect opportunity for companies, especially those that provide basic services, to build customer loyalty by creating efficient, personalized and unique customer experiences that adapt to the attention needs of each of them.
To do this, companies should bet on automated conversational intelligence solutions, such as Recordia, which allow them to reduce waiting times as much as possible and, above all, to offer and extract valuable information from each of the conversations with customers. In this way, offering an omnichannel, fluid service that adapts to the needs of each customer will become easier and more accessible.
Find out more about how we can help contact centers comply with this new law by clicking here.