For business
Prepare for laws requiring human customer service
Practical, sourced resources for customer service, CX, and compliance leaders — starting with California AB 1609.
Who's covered
AB 1609 applies to large private businesses: those with more than $500,000,000 in gross annual revenue nationally that provide goods and services to customers (§ 22625).
It protects customers — natural persons residing in California, based on the address associated with their account. "Services" means services the customer pays for; free services are excluded.
Some services and organizations are exempt, including CPUC-regulated telecom and water services in compliance with their general orders, exclusive business lines, hospitals for health-care communications, and consumer reporting agencies under the FCRA (§ 22628).
What to prepare
Six areas drawn directly from the statute.
- 01
Disclose AI clearly
Make sure no chatbot is represented as human, and disclose in-channel that it's AI where customers could be misled (§ 22626).
- 02
Offer a human on every platform
Let customers request an agent via common commands, prompts, menus, or verbal requests, during at least regular business hours (§ 22627).
- 03
Meet timing standards in good faith
Make a good-faith effort to connect within 15 minutes or offer a specific appointment within one business day, and to keep holds to 15 minutes at a time and one hour cumulative (§ 22627(b)–(c)).
- 04
Post your phone number
If you serve California online and offer phone support, post the number clearly and conspicuously on your website (§ 22627).
- 05
Document good-faith standards
Commercially reasonable and practicable standards designed to achieve compliance satisfy the good-faith requirement (§ 22628).
- 06
Plan for outages
Emergencies and outages beyond reasonable control are not violations; document how you respond (§ 22628).
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