AI and Call Recording Disclosure

2.What you hear on a call

The assistant answers in the business’s name and introduces itself as the business’s virtual assistant. Unless the business has chosen its own greeting, it says:

A business that uses its own greeting must keep telling callers that they are speaking with a virtual assistant. Right after the greeting, you hear the recording notice:

If the line greets you in another language, the recording notice is in that language too; in French, for example: “Pour votre information, cet appel peut être enregistré à des fins de qualité et pour bien noter vos coordonnées.”

If the business offers several languages, a short language menu is part of the greeting: press a key or simply start speaking. If you ask whether you are talking to a person, the assistant tells you it is the business’s virtual assistant. It never claims to be human.

3.What the assistant can do

• answer questions from the facts the business gave it, such as hours, location, services, prices and what to bring;
• take your name, number and message so that the business can follow up;
• book appointments in the business’s calendar, and find, move or cancel an appointment you booked;
• text you a confirmation and, for some businesses, a list of what to bring;
• text you after a missed call so you can carry on by text;
• speak English, Korean, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French or Japanese, in the languages the business offers; and
• answer texts, website chats and emails in the same way, if the business uses those channels.

4.What it will not do

• give legal, medical, financial, tax or immigration advice, or discuss diagnoses or test results;
• ask for or accept payment card or bank details, social insurance numbers, health-card numbers or passport numbers on a call: if you start to give one, it stops you, tells you the business will give you a safe way to share it, and never repeats it;
• pretend to be a person;
• act as an emergency service; or
• make decisions that need a licensed professional or the business’s judgment, or promise an outcome.

Please do not share sensitive numbers on the call. Anything you say is part of the recording and transcript.

Emergencies

JULY Call is not a 9-1-1 or emergency service and cannot send help. If you are in danger or have an emergency, hang up and call 9-1-1. If you tell the assistant that you or someone else is in danger, or describe a medical emergency, the first thing it does is tell you to hang up and call 9-1-1, and that the line is not an emergency service.

5.It can make mistakes

The assistant uses artificial intelligence and can get things wrong: it can mishear a name, a number or a date, or misunderstand a question. Check the confirmation you receive and contact the business if anything is wrong. The business, not JULY Call, is responsible for its services and for the information it gives the assistant.

6.Reaching a person

You can ask for a person at any time. Depending on how the business has set up its line, its own phone may ring first, the assistant may transfer your call to someone at the business, or it takes your name, number and message so that someone from the business can call you back; a message or an urgent request is sent to the business right away. The business sees everything the assistant arranges.

7.Recording and transcripts

Calls the assistant answers or places for a business are recorded from the moment they connect, so the greeting and the recording notice are on the recording. Each call is also transcribed, and the AI writes a short summary. The business uses them to check details, follow up, keep records and improve its service. The business can play them back in its dashboard; JULY Call staff access them only to provide support, to keep the service secure or when the law requires it, and every such access is recorded, with the reason for it, in an audit log that cannot be edited.

Recordings are stored in Canada after the call and kept for 90 days by default (a business may choose another period, between 7 days and 2 years; political and campaign offices keep theirs 400 days, as the Canada Elections Act requires for election calls), then deleted. A recording that captures your spoken consent, for example agreeing to hear from the business, is kept as proof of that consent for as long as your consent stands, and until 3 years after you withdraw it; then it is deleted.

Calls to our own sales and support line (the JULY Call line) are recorded too, with a notice at the start of the call, then transcribed and summarized for the JULY Call team; the recording is kept 90 days, and the transcript and summary stay with the lead the call created. Calls on our concierge line (the call we place to a customer when their setup is ready) are not recorded; we keep only a summary with the request the call created. Calls to the receptionist demo on our website are recorded and transcribed like a business’s calls, with the same notice, and kept 30 days (see Our live demos). Our Privacy Policy has the details.

8.If you do not want to be recorded

The assistant cannot switch the recording off during a call. If you do not want to be recorded, you can:

• hang up and contact the business another way, for example in person, by email or through its website; or
• ask for a person: the assistant takes your name and number, and someone from the business calls you back so you can discuss your matter with them (the short call with the assistant is still recorded).

You can also ask the business to delete the recording of your call, although a recording that captures your consent may be kept as proof of it, as described above. If you cannot reach the business, write to us at support@july.ca and we will pass on your request.

9.Texts, chats and email

Replies to your texts, WhatsApp messages, website chats and emails may also be written by the AI, and they are kept with the business’s records. Automated texts from a business, such as a booking confirmation, a reminder or a text after a missed call, carry its name and end with “Reply STOP to opt out.” Reply STOP to any text to stop texts from that business (reply START to opt back in), or use the unsubscribe link in an email. Our Messaging and Outreach Policy explains the rules.

10.If the assistant contacts you

Some businesses use JULY Call to contact people who have agreed to hear from them. An outreach call opens like this:

So you always know who is calling and how to reach them, the opening names the business, its mailing address and a number where the business can be reached. The recording notice follows. If you say you want them to stop, for example “stop calling me”, the assistant ends the outreach and records your opt-out for that business on every channel. If the call reaches voicemail, the assistant may leave a short message that ends with the same number and address. Outreach calls are placed only on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and on weekends from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and outreach texts are sent only on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on weekends from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., in your local time, worked out from your phone number’s area code.

11.The business’s own notices

Each business decides how it uses JULY Call and is responsible for its own notices and policies: its privacy policy, any additional notice or consent its laws or regulator require (for example, where everyone on a call must agree to it being recorded), and how it handles your information. JULY Call plays the notice above on every call; a business may add its own.

12.Our live demos

• Receptionist demo. A call from your browser to a fictional business, after you confirm your mobile number with a code we text you. It uses the same AI. If you book a time with the fictional business during the demo, that time is kept as a real follow-up: a consultation with the JULY Call team, who call you then; we text you a confirmation that says it was a JULY Call demo. Early on it asks your first name. Like a call to a business’s line, it is recorded and transcribed, and you hear the recording notice right after the greeting; our team plays the recording back and reads the transcript to check the demo’s quality, and both are deleted 30 days after the call. We keep your first name, your number, the questions you asked and any time you booked as a lead so a person at JULY Call can follow up (see our Privacy Policy).
• Outreach demo. The AI calls or texts your own phone, only after you ask on our website and agree. The call starts with “This is a demo you requested from julycall.com. Press 1 to hear it, or just hang up.”, and a text demo starts only after you reply YES. Its calls are not recorded; we keep your first name, your number and how the demo ended, as a lead so a person at JULY Call can follow up.

13.Questions

For questions about how a business uses JULY Call, or about your information, please ask the business first. For questions about JULY Call itself, write to support@july.ca.