The full Congress has approved, with a very large majority (there was only one negative vote, while Vox and Junts abstained), the law that regulates the customer service and which, among the measures it provides, limits to three minutes the telephone waiting for customer service and regulates the robotic service.
The first rule approved in this area “in the history of Spain”, as defended by the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, affects entities providing basic services of a general interest and is especially intended to protect all citizens, but especially the most vulnerable, with poor attention.
Specifically, the rule will affect companies that provide water and energy supply and distribution services; carriage of passengers by air, rail, sea or waterways, bus or coach; postal services; electronic and telephone communications and financial services. Also large companies (more than 250 employees), regardless of the sector. But it does not affect the companies of the Administration, which was criticized by the majority of the parliamentary groups.
The approved text, which now goes to the Senate, prohibits the use of answering machines or other similar means as an “exclusive means of attention” and, at the request of the consumer, when a query, complaint, claim or communication of “incidence is made by telephone or electronically, the company “must guarantee personalized attention”.
This personalized attention will be provided “as soon as possible” from the customer’s request, “guaranteeing” that 95% of requests are attended to, “on average, within a period of less than three minutes”.
At the same time, for basic services of general interest that are provided continuously, attention will be available 24 hours a day for the communication of incidents relating to the continuity of the service. In the case of successive treatment contracts linked to these services (a service is provided or an asset is sold over an extended period of time), inquiries about its continuity must be answered within two hours.
In all other cases, inquiries, complaints, claims or incidents, which must also be addressed in the co-official languages, will generally be resolved within a maximum of fifteen working days.
The law establishes that entities providing services of a basic nature of general interest must have a “universally accessible, inclusive, non-discriminatory and assessable” care service and must make available to these people the means of “necessary” support, providing them with “the individualized and personal assistance that is required” and, assuming that the service is provided face-to-face, having measures that “facilitate accessibility to information and communication”.
The socialist spokeswoman, Marisol Sánchez Jódar, defended that this law will serve to “avoid not a few headaches for citizens”, who, in her opinion, have “suffered impotence in the face of some customer service services, endless waits, answers that do not arrive never, conversations with machines and endless processesâ€. He also praised “that a basic service cannot be cut while there is a claim in progress” and that the customer service “serves to attend to inquiries and does not take advantage of this service to place other contracts”.
According to Podemos, this is a law that “is not intended to be just wet paper and will be enforced because it provides for audit mechanisms and sanctions in case of non-compliance”.
The PP believes that the approved law is “good for consumers, although it can be improved”.
