On December 27, 2008, Atento España received an illustrious visit from José Montilla, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, at the platform of Barcelona-Glòries. The President greeted the telephone operators of Serviço 012-Catalonia's Citizen Service Hotline-and thanked them for the tremendous commitment and dedication in their duties of helping citizens.

In fact, the increasing specialization and quality of service provided by our operators have recently been recognized at the state level, with the distinction of winning Gold at the 2008 CRC Awards for Best Outsourced Operation in Customer Relations, in the category of Best Information Service.

Since it was created four years ago with the aim of giving greater value to the service provided to citizens, Serviço 012 has grown from five to over forty specialized areas. Thus, citizens receive a first level of service for general consultations (traffic, addresses, phone numbers, transportation, etc.). The more complex requests go to a second level and are served by specialized operators (consumer affairs, taxes, labor relations, immigration, housing, chemical dependency/substance abuse, etc.).

By the same token, citizens can also carry out certain procedures over the phone with a more personalized service, thanks to our back-office solutions. As a "novelty" (which is just how President Montilla put it during his visit), people can now renew their applications for unemployment benefits by calling 012, thereby avoiding long lines.

Another one the innovations introduced in this service is the use of Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR), which allows the system to handle a higher number of requests at times of saturation of calls or-based objective parameters-to designate a limited number of openings for certain services, such as is done at summer camps.

"At Atento, we have centralized our efforts to offer solutions of value and quality to our customers, as shown by the fact that Serviço 012 is recognized as the best Citizen Service hotline in our country," asserts Miguel Matey, director of multi-sector business at Atento España.

Currently, the Serviço 012 citizens' service hotline receives more than 2.5 million calls annually. The Labor Minister of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Mar Serna, who accompanied Mr. Montilla during his visit to the Atento facilities, thanked the employees of this service for the work they perform "24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year."