In a bid to rid consumers of having to deal with those universally-hated automated voices on the phone, Spain’s government is presenting a bill that would make it obligatory for companies to have a real person in customer services pick up the call.
The bill, which includes a number of other related measures – such as limiting the time it takes to answer the call to a maximum of three minutes – was proposed by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and backed by the country’s ruling left-wing coalition in November.
It will now need the approval of Spain’s Council of State, followed by MPs, before it can become law. The government’s spokeswoman Isabel Rodríguez described this as the “second round”.
The customer will foot the bill for the extra phone workers.
But how will you tip them?
Seems insane to my American ears. I deal with my company’s call center and IVR and the idea of having to staff to those requirements would be deeply cost prohibitive, and probably just result in us outsourcing it to mediocre at best overseas CSRs that would give worse service than a properly functioning IVR with intelligent automation.
Japan, USA, South Korea, China, etc are very future tech thinking. They embrace it. I know, there’s a laundry list of very horrible 3rd world things that’re totally beneath are standards.. but beyond that herd mindset, they race toward the future and it’s mostly a beautiful thing to watch.
AI
AI is the next revolution. Customer service being one of its forefronts with it already making a huge impact worldwide from shopping to tech assistance.
Food industry
Japan for example has self-service places to eat that bring you food on a belt, it stops at your table. You never see anyone. It reduces staff, quality of food is exactly the same, prices of food are able to be lowered. It’s a win-win, especially the higher paying jobs behind that tech from the software to the hardware.
USA had a dream of automating grocery stores many decades ago but they invented the modern grocery store instead, it was a marvel to the point of the Soviet leader visiting one once and stating how impressed he was. I’m sure some were against that too, now its weird not to see one anywhere in the world, even the checkout technology itself.
—
Just a couple examples and yet again we position ourselves to be behind the Asia and North America due to conservatism. Instead of repositioning those people to make a higher income supporting the tech, its instead a fuck-all mentality.
I embrace technology and I embrace laws that keep it under check but total bans like this, no, I’m absolutely against it. So many well paid jobs are behind that self service industry.
LMAO. It’s shocking a government can be this moronic. I’ve been trying to get a Spanish visa for a month and they are literally unreachable with zero automation. Last place of all Europeans countries for customer service and automation. Meanwhile everyone will race ahead with artificial intelligence improving by orders of magnitude every few years. You do you Spain, we love you anyways. The tapas and wine make it worth it in the end.
Most companies are using hybrid customer services and as the article states this method is not efficient.
There is no link to the bill draft to read the content so probably the will oblige companies to present the customer with two options at the very beginning of the call
A. Human contact
B. Automated service
The important bit is this part “The bill, which includes a number of other related measures – such as limiting the time it takes to answer the call to a maximum of three minutes” which will save them a lot of time and money when calling the airline companies.
I guess that means more outsourcing jobs to Latin America. Instead of a bot reading the script, you’ll have a person reading the same script.
One way a person is better is you can just explain your problem instead of figuring out what button to press next.
I’d be happy with a ban on the phrase “we are experiencing unusually high call volumes.” It can’t *always be unusual*. I’d much rather get “we have intentionally understaffed our customer service center — at all times — because we hope that long waiting times will deter you from seeking help.” That would at least be honest.
Enjoy even longer waitlines since now everyone needs to be forwarded to the correct department after having their call answered by the wrong person.
Lmao based on the title I thought it was about banning all automation because its “stealing our jobs”. Like ATMs or self checkout
Finally!!! should be banned all over europe!! drives me crazy, what a loss of time..
and in the end the conclusion is : ‘do you wish to speak to a real person?’ YES I DO!!!
I mean…when I call for customer service I always go for the option of speaking to a human being. I can see the Spanish government’s point in this situation, they probably hate those fucking robot voices too.
That’s stupid.
teleperformance lobbying
So fucking stupid. If automation can remove load from the customer service, then they will have more time to help people with problems.
But this law just forces you to outsource your customer service.
Pretty stupid.
This is incredibly regressive, especially long term. AI chatbots are great, voice customer service is alright – both are still a developing service, and both are already as good as an actual person reading the same script. In 5-10 years time the tech might even be better than a person and Spain will still be stuck with a law that forces outsourcing to Ecuador or some other place.
It’s bad implementation that makes it frustrating. I also do think there should be an option to call or chat to an employee if there are more complicated, non scripted issues to address.
Good. These companies love to hide behind bots that make it impossible to reach anyone when there’s a problem.
Pretty retarded
Seems like a bad idea.
Sometimes it is helpful to filter people to the right area. Pointless being put through to one person only to have them forward you on again.
Based spanish
In my experience – a live person on the phone means that they will also try to sell you some service upgrade and so on.
Now, here, with the introduction of bank identity, almost everything should be authorized through it.
Bank identity is the system that makes it so that you can also perform legal acts, confirm contracts and so on through your e-banking.
It’s then your bank’s system that confirms that it’s really you.
For once I can feel proud about what my government is doing… kinda feels like they’re trying to, you know, better people’s lives.
This comes after the law signed 2 (3?) weeks ago legislating the right to abortion by 16-17 year-olds, the derogation of an absurd “waiting period” put in by the right-wing government a few years ago, a universally-recognised right for women with painful periods to receive a paid medical leave of a couple of days each month, and a few other generally good things.
To this day I remember trying to call 1&1 about my DSL 2000 straight up not working.
I tried and tried to get a Human being on the Phone, to no avail.After many tries, I wrote a physical letter and told them where to shove their “Service”.Quit.
They had the Balls to try and take Money from me anyway.Luckily, my Bank was cooperative and blocked all of their Shit.Got threatened for “non payment” and whatnot by them.Lawyer told them to fuck off, eventually they got the message.
I only wanted my DSL 2000 fixed.By a Human fucking being, answering Questions.
Any Company using these Systems does not get a Cent from me, ever since.
Hopefully Laws like this will make Companies take Note.
Finally! Currently you cant get support for anything. You can talk to a bot that takes you round and round in circles and there is no option to reach a real person at all for any service.
I get that automation saves time of your support but in Spain at least that is not the case. The system is abused in such a way that support engineers are fired to save money and replaced with a useless bot so companies dont have any support what so ever instead of having a bot with an option to talk to a real person. The companies make millions and cant pay a single support engineer?! Not only is this new law more than welcome it is essential.
I moved here from Canada and there most companies have a support engineer for every 10 clients while in spain a company with 20 million customers has a bot, automated phone system and 0 support engineers.
Oh please let’s have this for all of Europe. Also any kind of “support” should not be allowed to be automated. All these fucking support bots or automated reply emails that completely ignore what you say and deny any issues.
So now you’ll have to wait in a line to tell someone your issue so they can assign you to another line? What is there to gain with this?
Good intentions but stupid solution. An intelligently designed automatic service is better than an untrained and underpaid human
This is misleading.
It bans all-automated customer service. Not automated services in general.
Fighting progress and automation, way to go Europe!
Spain: has major, deep, long-term structural problems
Spanish government: has solutions… to random s*it
For those that love so much giving an opinion without reading the article, Spain is not banning automated customer service in its entirety. This law only requires that if a company uses an automated system, there must also be a way the customer can demand to speak to a human within that system. You’re welcome for saving you literally 5 minutes of your time
This is absolutely pants-on-head retarded.
Politicians live in a fantasy world, I can’t even… let’s apply this standard to government services, I want human service in less than 3 minutes on those too.
Ahhh it’s good to see socialism working it’s magic, pushing countries back to the 20th century.The goverment mandating the creation of pintless jobs that always ends up well for the economy.
Add a bill to ban robocalls as well across EU!!!
I have a little dirty trick. Whenever I have one of those automatic things, and they ask you to clearly state the reason of your call, you just say:
“Cancel services”
They will put you through to a person almost instantly. Cheers.
That some good idea!
Muy buen! Everywhere but especially in health care, those freaking tapes (often with useless referrals to online info) should be outlawed.
39 comments
In a bid to rid consumers of having to deal with those universally-hated automated voices on the phone, Spain’s government is presenting a bill that would make it obligatory for companies to have a real person in customer services pick up the call.
The bill, which includes a number of other related measures – such as limiting the time it takes to answer the call to a maximum of three minutes – was proposed by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and backed by the country’s ruling left-wing coalition in November.
It will now need the approval of Spain’s Council of State, followed by MPs, before it can become law. The government’s spokeswoman Isabel Rodríguez described this as the “second round”.
The customer will foot the bill for the extra phone workers.
But how will you tip them?
Seems insane to my American ears. I deal with my company’s call center and IVR and the idea of having to staff to those requirements would be deeply cost prohibitive, and probably just result in us outsourcing it to mediocre at best overseas CSRs that would give worse service than a properly functioning IVR with intelligent automation.
Japan, USA, South Korea, China, etc are very future tech thinking. They embrace it. I know, there’s a laundry list of very horrible 3rd world things that’re totally beneath are standards.. but beyond that herd mindset, they race toward the future and it’s mostly a beautiful thing to watch.
AI
AI is the next revolution. Customer service being one of its forefronts with it already making a huge impact worldwide from shopping to tech assistance.
Food industry
Japan for example has self-service places to eat that bring you food on a belt, it stops at your table. You never see anyone. It reduces staff, quality of food is exactly the same, prices of food are able to be lowered. It’s a win-win, especially the higher paying jobs behind that tech from the software to the hardware.
USA had a dream of automating grocery stores many decades ago but they invented the modern grocery store instead, it was a marvel to the point of the Soviet leader visiting one once and stating how impressed he was. I’m sure some were against that too, now its weird not to see one anywhere in the world, even the checkout technology itself.
—
Just a couple examples and yet again we position ourselves to be behind the Asia and North America due to conservatism. Instead of repositioning those people to make a higher income supporting the tech, its instead a fuck-all mentality.
I embrace technology and I embrace laws that keep it under check but total bans like this, no, I’m absolutely against it. So many well paid jobs are behind that self service industry.
LMAO. It’s shocking a government can be this moronic. I’ve been trying to get a Spanish visa for a month and they are literally unreachable with zero automation. Last place of all Europeans countries for customer service and automation. Meanwhile everyone will race ahead with artificial intelligence improving by orders of magnitude every few years. You do you Spain, we love you anyways. The tapas and wine make it worth it in the end.
Most companies are using hybrid customer services and as the article states this method is not efficient.
There is no link to the bill draft to read the content so probably the will oblige companies to present the customer with two options at the very beginning of the call
A. Human contact
B. Automated service
The important bit is this part “The bill, which includes a number of other related measures – such as limiting the time it takes to answer the call to a maximum of three minutes” which will save them a lot of time and money when calling the airline companies.
I guess that means more outsourcing jobs to Latin America. Instead of a bot reading the script, you’ll have a person reading the same script.
One way a person is better is you can just explain your problem instead of figuring out what button to press next.
I’d be happy with a ban on the phrase “we are experiencing unusually high call volumes.” It can’t *always be unusual*. I’d much rather get “we have intentionally understaffed our customer service center — at all times — because we hope that long waiting times will deter you from seeking help.” That would at least be honest.
Enjoy even longer waitlines since now everyone needs to be forwarded to the correct department after having their call answered by the wrong person.
Lmao based on the title I thought it was about banning all automation because its “stealing our jobs”. Like ATMs or self checkout
Finally!!! should be banned all over europe!! drives me crazy, what a loss of time..
and in the end the conclusion is : ‘do you wish to speak to a real person?’ YES I DO!!!
I mean…when I call for customer service I always go for the option of speaking to a human being. I can see the Spanish government’s point in this situation, they probably hate those fucking robot voices too.
That’s stupid.
teleperformance lobbying
So fucking stupid. If automation can remove load from the customer service, then they will have more time to help people with problems.
But this law just forces you to outsource your customer service.
Pretty stupid.
This is incredibly regressive, especially long term. AI chatbots are great, voice customer service is alright – both are still a developing service, and both are already as good as an actual person reading the same script. In 5-10 years time the tech might even be better than a person and Spain will still be stuck with a law that forces outsourcing to Ecuador or some other place.
It’s bad implementation that makes it frustrating. I also do think there should be an option to call or chat to an employee if there are more complicated, non scripted issues to address.
Good. These companies love to hide behind bots that make it impossible to reach anyone when there’s a problem.
Pretty retarded
Seems like a bad idea.
Sometimes it is helpful to filter people to the right area. Pointless being put through to one person only to have them forward you on again.
Based spanish
In my experience – a live person on the phone means that they will also try to sell you some service upgrade and so on.
Now, here, with the introduction of bank identity, almost everything should be authorized through it.
Bank identity is the system that makes it so that you can also perform legal acts, confirm contracts and so on through your e-banking.
It’s then your bank’s system that confirms that it’s really you.
For once I can feel proud about what my government is doing… kinda feels like they’re trying to, you know, better people’s lives.
This comes after the law signed 2 (3?) weeks ago legislating the right to abortion by 16-17 year-olds, the derogation of an absurd “waiting period” put in by the right-wing government a few years ago, a universally-recognised right for women with painful periods to receive a paid medical leave of a couple of days each month, and a few other generally good things.
To this day I remember trying to call 1&1 about my DSL 2000 straight up not working.
I tried and tried to get a Human being on the Phone, to no avail.After many tries, I wrote a physical letter and told them where to shove their “Service”.Quit.
They had the Balls to try and take Money from me anyway.Luckily, my Bank was cooperative and blocked all of their Shit.Got threatened for “non payment” and whatnot by them.Lawyer told them to fuck off, eventually they got the message.
I only wanted my DSL 2000 fixed.By a Human fucking being, answering Questions.
Any Company using these Systems does not get a Cent from me, ever since.
Hopefully Laws like this will make Companies take Note.
Finally! Currently you cant get support for anything. You can talk to a bot that takes you round and round in circles and there is no option to reach a real person at all for any service.
I get that automation saves time of your support but in Spain at least that is not the case. The system is abused in such a way that support engineers are fired to save money and replaced with a useless bot so companies dont have any support what so ever instead of having a bot with an option to talk to a real person. The companies make millions and cant pay a single support engineer?! Not only is this new law more than welcome it is essential.
I moved here from Canada and there most companies have a support engineer for every 10 clients while in spain a company with 20 million customers has a bot, automated phone system and 0 support engineers.
Oh please let’s have this for all of Europe. Also any kind of “support” should not be allowed to be automated. All these fucking support bots or automated reply emails that completely ignore what you say and deny any issues.
So now you’ll have to wait in a line to tell someone your issue so they can assign you to another line? What is there to gain with this?
Good intentions but stupid solution. An intelligently designed automatic service is better than an untrained and underpaid human
This is misleading.
It bans all-automated customer service. Not automated services in general.
Fighting progress and automation, way to go Europe!
Spain: has major, deep, long-term structural problems
Spanish government: has solutions… to random s*it
For those that love so much giving an opinion without reading the article, Spain is not banning automated customer service in its entirety. This law only requires that if a company uses an automated system, there must also be a way the customer can demand to speak to a human within that system. You’re welcome for saving you literally 5 minutes of your time
This is absolutely pants-on-head retarded.
Politicians live in a fantasy world, I can’t even… let’s apply this standard to government services, I want human service in less than 3 minutes on those too.
Ahhh it’s good to see socialism working it’s magic, pushing countries back to the 20th century.The goverment mandating the creation of pintless jobs that always ends up well for the economy.
Add a bill to ban robocalls as well across EU!!!
I have a little dirty trick. Whenever I have one of those automatic things, and they ask you to clearly state the reason of your call, you just say:
“Cancel services”
They will put you through to a person almost instantly. Cheers.
That some good idea!
Muy buen! Everywhere but especially in health care, those freaking tapes (often with useless referrals to online info) should be outlawed.