Privacy
How our AI handles your data
Plain English, because the people trusting us with this are salon owners, not lawyers.
Last updated 7 August 2026
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 and Square receive the bookings you've chosen to sync; Stripe processes online booking deposits, paid straight to your account. 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.
Requests from public authorities
Requests from public authorities for user data are reviewed for legal validity before any disclosure. Unlawful or overbroad requests are challenged. Only the minimum information necessary is disclosed. Every request, our response, the legal basis and the people involved are documented and retained.
Where it lives and how it's protected
Your data is stored with reputable cloud providers and protected with specific safeguards. It is encrypted in transit using TLS/HTTPS, and encrypted at rest in our databases and file storage. Access is restricted to the small number of people who need it to run and support your agent, enforced with authentication and least-privilege permissions, and administrative access is logged. Our systems run on established, independently security-audited infrastructure. 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.
Google user data
When you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address to create and secure your account. Where you connect Google Calendar, DeskOwl accesses only your calendar, and only to do what you asked it to: read your availability and create, update or cancel the appointments your agent books. This Google user data — including any sensitive scopes such as your calendar — is protected with the safeguards described above: encrypted in transit and at rest, access-restricted, and never sold, shared for advertising, or used to train generalised AI or machine-learning models. You can disconnect Google access at any time from your Google Account's security settings or by contacting us, which immediately stops all further access. DeskOwl's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.
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. If you're not happy with how we've handled something, tell us and we'll try to put it right; you can also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.
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 within 30 days, at your choice.
This website
Separate from the AI service above, our marketing website (deskowl.com.au) uses a few tools to see how visitors find us, which pages lead to a demo or sign-up, and how the pages are used: Google Analytics and Opinly for site analytics, Microsoft Clarity for anonymised heatmaps and session replays (how pages are scrolled and clicked, with anything you type masked out), and the Meta (Facebook) Pixel, which also lets us show our ads to people who have visited us before. They record page views and actions like starting a sign-up or booking a demo. None of them receives your salon's or your clients' call data, and none of them can tell us who you are by name: they work with anonymous identifiers, not identities. We learn a name only when you give us one, by booking a demo, signing up, or asking our sample salon to call you. All of these load only after you accept all cookies.
Cookies and your choice
The first time you visit, we ask before any of that runs. Choose "Accept all" and the three tools above load and may set cookies. Choose "Essentials only" and none of them load: no Meta Pixel at all, and Google runs in consent-denied mode, which means no advertising or analytics cookies. Until you choose, nothing loads, so the question is a real one rather than a formality. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage, not in a cookie, and clearing your browser's site data for deskowl.com.au resets it and brings the question back. You can also opt out independently through your Meta ad preferences, Google's ad settings, or your browser's own cookie controls.
Questions, corrections or deletion requests: hello@deskowl.ai