Privacy
How our AI handles your data
Plain English, because the people trusting us with this are salon owners, not lawyers.
Draft. This is an accurate plain-English account of how DeskOwl handles data today, written for pilot salons. A lawyer-reviewed privacy policy, compliant with the Australian Privacy Act, will replace it before general availability.
DeskOwl is an AI agent
DeskOwl answers your salon's phone with an artificial intelligence voice agent, not a human receptionist. It never pretends otherwise: if a caller asks whether they're speaking to an AI, it says so. Everything below describes what that agent needs to do its job, and nothing more.
What we collect
From salons: your business details, services, prices, staff, opening hours and booking rules. From callers: their phone number, name, the audio and transcript of the call, and the booking details and preferences needed to make and manage appointments. This is the same kind of information your front desk already handles by hand.
How the AI processes a call
When a call comes in, the audio is streamed in real time to our voice-AI infrastructure so the agent can understand speech and respond. The conversation is transcribed, and the agent uses your salon's services, availability and rules to answer questions and place bookings. Transcripts and call summaries are stored so you can see what happened on every call.
Who processes data on our behalf
DeskOwl is built on specialist providers, each receiving only what it needs: Twilio carries the phone calls and sends SMS confirmations; Retell AI runs the real-time voice agent and its language model; ElevenLabs generates the agent's voice; Google Calendar (or Cal.com, or a calendar we host) stores the bookings you've connected. We don't hand your data to anyone who isn't needed to run your agent.
Call recording and consent
Calls may be recorded and transcribed to run your agent and to review its accuracy. Where consent is required, it is requested at the start of the call, and a caller's choice is respected. Callers who decline are still served and booked normally.
What we never do
We don't sell your data. We don't share your client list. We don't use your clients' calls or information to train AI models for anyone else. Your salon's data exists to run your salon's agent, and that is the only thing it is used for.
Where it lives and how it's protected
Data is stored with reputable cloud providers, encrypted in transit, with access limited to the people who need it to run and support your agent. Some of the AI providers above process call audio outside Australia as part of delivering the service; we only work with providers who commit contractually to protecting it.
Your clients' rights
Any caller can ask what's held about them, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. Requests can come to us directly or through your salon, and we'll action them with you in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.
Retention and deletion
Call recordings and transcripts are kept only as long as needed to run and improve your salon's own agent. If you stop using DeskOwl, tell us and we'll return or delete your salon and client data.
Questions, corrections or deletion requests: hello@deskowl.com.au