Govt setting up ecosystem to resolve consumer complaints at pre-litigation stage: Secretary

The government is putting in place an ecosystem to eventually resolve consumer complaints at the pre-litigation stage itself, Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare said on Saturday.

Speaking at a World Consumer Rights Day webinar, Khare said a hassle-free, speedy, and cost-effective platform through the National Consumer Helpline (NCH) system has been created to resolve consumer grievances.

The technological transformation of NCH with artificial intelligence (AI) tools has led to a significant increase in its call-handling capacity. The number of calls received by NCH has grown nearly tenfold from 14,795 calls in January 2015, she said.

Going forward, the NCH 3.0 -- third phase of modernisation -- will further smoothen a lot of issues and resolve complaints in a shorter time, she said.

So far, consumer complaints were resolved in 45 days. "With the use of AI tools, we are going to resolve most complaints within seven days."

"We want the consumer complaints to be resolved at the pre-litigation stage itself so that nobody goes through the suffering of litigation," the Secretary added.