Spain's New Customer Service Law (Ley 10/2025): What Businesses Need to Know

On 27 December 2025, Spain published Ley 10/2025 in the Official State Gazette (BOE), a sweeping new law regulating customer service standards for companies operating in the country. The deadline for organizations to meet these new customer service compliance requirements is 28 December 2026.

This is Spain's first comprehensive law dedicated exclusively to customer service. It introduces binding minimum quality standards, strict response-time targets, and a mandatory annual audit regime. For any business selling to consumers in Spain, this is not a minor administrative update. It changes how customer service must be designed, staffed, and measured.

Here's what your business needs to know.

Why This Law Exists

Spanish consumer protection has long guaranteed a right to file complaints and receive personal attention, but enforcement was inconsistent and quality varied widely across sectors. Regulators found that a large share of complaints reaching public consumer protection authorities could have been resolved directly by a company's own customer service team if that service had worked as intended. Ley 10/2025 responds to that gap by making minimum quality standards a binding legal requirement rather than an aspiration.

Who Does the Law Apply To?

The law casts a wide net, covering two distinct categories of businesses (Article 2):

1. Essential service providers, regardless of size:

• Water, gas, and electricity supply and distribution
• Passenger transport (air, rail, sea, or coach/bus)
• Postal services
• Electronic communications (telecoms), governed primarily by sector-specific rules
• Financial services, also governed primarily by sector-specific rules

2. Large companies, meaning any company or corporate group that, in the previous financial year, met any one of these thresholds:

• 250 or more employees
• More than €50 million in annual turnover
• More than €43 million in annual balance sheet

This second category is intentionally broad. It sweeps in retail chains, hotel groups, professional services firms, and any consumer-facing business of meaningful scale, regardless of the sector it operates in.

Crucially, the law applies regardless of where the company is established, whether in Spain or another country, as long as it provides these services or sells to consumers in Spanish territory. The requirements apply across all communication channels, whether the customer service function is managed internally or outsourced to a third party, and regardless of where the point of contact is physically located. Relocating a call center abroad or outsourcing the function does not take a business outside the law’s reach.

The Core Obligations

Chapter II of the law sets out the minimum quality parameters every covered business must meet:

Multiple, accessible communication channels. Companies must accept complaints and queries through at least the channel used to originate the contract, as well as by postal mail, phone, and at least one electronic channel. All channels must be universally accessible.

A real human being, on request. Automated systems (IVR menus, chatbots, answering machines) can no longer be the only way to reach a company. At any point during an automated interaction, the customer must be able to request a human operator, who must identify themselves at the start of the conversation.

Fast response times. Phone-based customer service must meet a strict benchmark: 95% of calls must be answered, on average, in under three minutes. The same three-minute target applies to requests for personalized human attention. Companies also cannot disconnect a call simply because the wait time is too long.

Traceable complaint handling. Every query, complaint, or incident must be assigned an identification code so the customer can track its status. Where requested, the company must also provide dated proof of the communication's content. If the customer consents, phone or video calls must be recorded and made available to them.

Binding resolution deadlines. Complaints must generally be resolved within 15 business days. That drops to five business days for billing or improper-charge disputes and just two hours for service-continuity issues, such as outages, affecting the essential services listed above.

No service suspension during disputes. For ongoing contracts (utilities, subscriptions, telecoms), companies cannot suspend service over an issue that is the direct subject of an active complaint until a formal, reasoned resolution has been communicated, unless safety is at risk.

Response in the same language. Companies must respond in the language in which a query was submitted, with specific protections for Spain's co-official regional languages (Catalan, Basque, Galician, Valencian, and Aranese) when serving customers located in those regions.

Protection for vulnerable consumers. The law requires specific accommodations, including priority phone attention, alternative accessible formats, sign-language video interpretation for elderly customers (65+), people with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups.

No upselling through the complaints channel. Companies generally cannot use a complaint or service-continuity query as an opportunity to pitch new products or offers unless the offer is directly tied to resolving the issue and improves the customer's terms or price.

Ongoing Compliance: Evaluation and Audits

This is where Ley 10/2025 goes further than most consumer protection rules. It doesn't just set standards; it requires companies to prove they are meeting them.

• Companies must implement a documented annual system to measure their own performance against the law's quality parameters, retain records for at least five years, and publish both the system's documentation and its audit report on their website.
• An independent, ENAC-accredited auditor must review that system every year, verifying that the measurement error on each parameter does not exceed 5%.
• Smaller qualifying companies (those below the 250-employee, €50 million turnover, and €43 million balance-sheet thresholds) may conduct this evaluation and audit every two years instead of annually, where justified by their complaint volume.

Regulators can request this documentation at any time, and the burden of proving Ley 10/2025 compliance sits with the company, not the consumer.

Outsourcing and Multilingual Operations

For companies considering customer service outsourcing in Spain, one question comes up often: Can the service be handled from outside the country or by an outsourced provider? The short answer is yes. The law does not restrict where the service is delivered from or who delivers it. What it does require is that the standard of service remains the same regardless of location or provider, including the same response times, the same right to a human agent, the same complaint logging, proof, and recording obligations.

It's also worth being precise about the language rules. They are aimed primarily at guaranteeing service in Spain's co-official regional languages for customers located in those regions. This is not a blanket mandate to serve every customer in every possible language. That said, any company serving Spanish-speaking customers should treat fluent, high-quality Spanish-language service as a baseline expectation, not an afterthought, regardless of where its agents are physically based.

For companies weighing offshore or outsourced customer service models, the practical checklist is the same either way: confirm the provider can hit the three-minute/95% benchmark, escalate to a human agent on request, log and issue proof of every complaint, and record calls with consent. These requirements should also be built directly into the outsourcing contract, since the contracting company remains legally responsible even when a third party handles the calls.

Penalties for Non-Compliance

Breaches of Ley 10/2025 are treated as consumer protection infringements and sanctioned under Spain's general consumer protection sanctioning regime. In practice, enforcement falls to the competent regional authorities in Spain’s autonomous communities. The framework considers aggravating factors, such as repeat violations, as well as mitigating factors, including whether the company compensated affected customers. Where sector-specific enforcement regimes already exist, such as in financial services and telecoms, those rules take precedence over the general regime.

How TransPerfect Can Support Ley 10/2025 Compliance

Meeting Ley 10/2025’s requirements is a significant operational undertaking, from achieving the 95%-within-three-minutes response benchmark and guaranteeing human escalation to providing multilingual support, omnichannel logging, and a fully documented, audit-ready quality system. With the December 2026 compliance deadline approaching, building those capabilities from scratch can be a considerable challenge.

This is where TransPerfect Connect comes in. With more than 30 years of experience in contact center operations and business process outsourcing (BPO), TransPerfect Connect helps companies build and manage programs that support customer service compliance and meet complex operational and regulatory requirements. Companies can access these capabilities without the overhead of hiring, training, and managing an entire operation in-house.

• Multilingual proficiency, done right. Through in-language fluent agents and over-the-phone, video, and on-site interpretation services, TransPerfect Connect helps companies serve customers accurately in Spanish and Spain's co-official regional languages where required. This support can help address the law's language and accessibility requirements regardless of where agents are physically based.
• Flexible, scalable staffing. Call volumes rarely stay flat, but the law's response-time benchmarks apply regardless. TransPerfect Connect's staffing model can scale up or down as needed, helping companies meet the three-minute and 95% response targets without overstaffing during quieter periods.
• Omnichannel support. Voice, chat, social, and back-office channels are supported under one roof, helping companies meet requirements for multiple accessible communication channels, including the channel used to originate the customer relationship.
• AI-enhanced workflows with a guaranteed human option. TransPerfect Connect combines AI-driven efficiency with trained human agents, supporting one of Ley 10/2025's core requirements: automation can assist, but a real person must be available on request.
• Seamless CRM integration. Agents can work directly within a company's existing CRM and databases, supporting the traceability, identification code, and record-keeping requirements established by the law.
• Sector experience across regulated industries. TransPerfect Connect has experience across banking, financial services and insurance, e-commerce and retail, healthcare, telecommunications, and utilities, including several sectors covered by Ley 10/2025’s essential-services requirements.

Companies working with TransPerfect Connect report an average client partnership of more than 10 years, 30% faster resolution times through AI-enhanced workflows, and customer satisfaction rates above 96%. That kind of track record matters when customer service performance is subject to regulatory scrutiny as well as customer expectations.

If your business is assessing how to meet the December 2026 deadline, the TransPerfect Connect team can help design a multilingual customer service model aligned with the law’s requirements. Explore TransPerfect Connect’s contact center solutions or request a free quote to get started.

What Businesses Should Do Now

1. Confirm whether you're in scope. Check the essential-services list, then review the 250-employee, €50 million turnover, and €43 million balance-sheet thresholds. Remember that meeting any one of these thresholds triggers coverage and that group-level figures count.
2. Audit your current channels against the law's requirements. Can customers always reach a human agent? Can you meet the three-minute benchmark? Do you log every complaint and provide customers with the required proof?
3. Review outsourcing contracts. Make sure any third-party provider, whether in Spain or abroad, is contractually bound to the same standards as your company.
4. Build your evaluation and audit system now. With an annual, externally audited system required from the start of full compliance, this is not something to leave until the final quarter of 2026.

Check data protection alignment. Call recording, quality audits, and any AI-assisted customer service tools should all be designed with GDPR compliance in mind from the outset.