Recording Calls and Saving Chat Transcripts

Two separate bodies of law

They get conflated, and they ask different questions.

The Criminal Code addresses the interception of private communications. Interception by a party to the conversation, or with the consent of a party, sits differently from interception by somebody who is not part of it.

Which is where the phrase one-party consent comes from, and it is the criminal-law position rather than the whole picture.

Privacy legislation asks separate questions: whether the individual knows, whether they consented, whether the purpose is reasonable, and how long the recording is kept.

A recording can sit on the right side of the first and the wrong side of the second, which is exactly where businesses end up.

The notice requirement in practice

Under privacy law the guidance for organisations recording customer calls is consistent in direction: tell people, tell them why, and give them an alternative where you reasonably can.

What that looks like: a statement at the start of the call, before any recording, saying that the call may be recorded and for what purpose. Not a general mention on a website nobody read.

Stating the purpose matters more than businesses expect. For quality and training is a purpose. Recording without stating one, or recording for a purpose you later use differently, is where complaints arise.

The alternative point is the part most often skipped. Somebody who objects should have a route: a call handled without recording, or another channel.

Chat transcripts

Treated more casually and carrying the same obligations.

A live chat widget that logs everything typed is collecting personal information, frequently including whatever the customer volunteers, which in a service context can be a great deal.

What to check: that the chat interface says transcripts are kept, where they are stored and by whom, how long they are retained, and who can read them.

Third-party chat tools are the complication. The transcripts sit with the vendor, sometimes outside Canada, and the responsibility for that information remains yours as the organisation that collected it.

Which means the vendor's retention settings are your retention policy whether you configured them or not.

What people put in a chat

Worth anticipating, because the volunteered content is the sensitive part.

Customers describe medical situations to a clinic, financial circumstances to a broker, and household details to a trade. None of it was asked for and all of it is now in a transcript.

Practical responses: do not ask for identifiers you do not need, warn against sending payment details through chat, and set retention short enough that transcripts are not accumulating indefinitely.

If your chat is answered by an outsourced team or an automated system, say so, since customers reasonably assume they are talking to the business.

Recording in the other direction

The situation businesses ask about most: a customer recording you.

A participant recording their own conversation is on different footing from a third party doing it, which is the same distinction as above applied the other way round.

The practical guidance is unglamorous. Assume any call may be recorded by the other side, and do not say anything on a call you would not want played back. That is a better protection than any policy.

Employees

Recording staff calls is a workplace privacy question as well as a customer one, and provincial rules differ, with some provinces having private-sector privacy statutes covering employee information.

What it needs: a stated purpose, notice to employees, proportionality between the purpose and the intrusion, and limits on who can access recordings and for what.

Recording that goes beyond its stated purpose, such as quality recordings used later in a performance dispute, is where this becomes contentious.

The short checklist

1. Announce it at the start, with the purpose.
2. Offer an alternative to somebody who objects.
3. Set a retention period and enforce it automatically.
4. Limit access to people who need it.
5. Know where the vendor stores it.
6. Use it only for the stated purpose.

This is general information rather than legal advice, and the privacy commissioner publishes guidance on recording customer calls. The underlying question of what you are holding and why is covered in knowing what customer data you actually hold.

Frequently asked questions

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