Human service in SAC becomes mandatory in regulated sectors

Companies in sectors regulated by the federal government will have to offer human service at SAC from Monday (2), according to Times Brasil. The rule covers telephony, electricity, health plans, air transport and financial institutions covered by the rule, and is valid even when the company uses robots or artificial intelligence to respond to the customer.

According to the vehicle, the requirement applies to all days, including weekends and holidays, with a human attendant available from 8am to 8pm. Contact can be made by telephone or via digital channels.

The declared objective is to make life easier for consumers who have difficulty navigating through automatic menus, one of the most common problems in the relationship between customers and service providers.

The measure reopens an old discussion: to what extent the State should detail the way in which companies organize their service, and how much of this cost ends up included in the tariffs and monthly fees paid by the consumer themselves. Customer defense is legitimate, but rules by sector require transparency about how they will be monitored and how much they will cost.

In practice, the standard must oblige companies in these sectors to scale human teams to cover all scheduled days and times, which cannot be solved with automation alone.

What changes for the investor

The possible effect for those who invest in these sectors is pressure on operational costs, with a greater impact on companies that rely heavily on SAC to serve large volumes of customers. The size of this effect will depend on the weight of service in each business and each company's ability to absorb the change without passing on the cost. It is worth following company announcements and upcoming quarterly results to understand how much the rule actually weighs. This material does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell shares.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.