Privacy Policy

1Who we are

Bea is an AI receptionist service operated by Be Digital Limited trading as Be Connect, a New Zealand company. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Be Digital Limited.

If you have any question about this policy or about how your information is handled, contact us at sales@bedigital.co.nz.

2Who this policy covers

Three different groups of people have information handled through Bea, and the rules differ for each. It matters which one you are:

3What we collect

From website visitors

• What you type into our forms — your name, business name, email address, phone number, the plan you are interested in and anything you write in a message field.
• Analytics data — pages viewed, how you arrived, approximate location (from IP address, at city level), device and browser type. We use Google Analytics 4 for this.
• Technical logs — IP address, request times and error information, kept by our hosting provider for security and troubleshooting.

From customers

• Account information — business name, contact names, email addresses, phone numbers, billing details and your service plan.
• Business configuration — the information you give Bea so she can do the job: your services, opening hours, pricing, FAQs, staff names and roles, escalation and transfer rules, and the numbers calls should be transferred to.
• Usage information — call volumes, minutes used, which features you use, and service logs.

From callers

• Call metadata — the number you called from (unless withheld), the number you called, the time and length of the call.
• What you say — Bea converts speech to text in order to understand and respond. A transcript and a written summary of the call are produced.
• Details you provide — typically your name, contact number, the reason for your call, an address, and appointment or job details.
• Call audio — only if the business you called has turned recording on. Recording is off by default. See our Call Recording Policy.

4Why we use it

We only use personal information for the purpose it was collected for, and for directly related purposes you would reasonably expect:

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

Marketing

If you enquire or subscribe, we may email you about Bea — service news, features and offers. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing does not affect the service messages you need to receive as a customer.

5AI and your data

Bea uses speech recognition and large language model technology supplied by specialist providers. Two things are worth stating plainly:

• We do not sell or give your conversations to anyone to train public AI models. Our agreements with our AI providers are configured so that customer and caller content is not used to train their general-purpose models.
• We may use de-identified, aggregated information — such as how often a type of request is misheard — to improve how Bea performs. This does not identify any individual.

Our AI Disclosure explains how Bea works, what she can and cannot do, and how human handover happens.

6Who we share it with

We share personal information only with parties who need it to deliver the service, and only under agreements requiring them to protect it and use it solely for that purpose:

• The customer whose calls we answer — caller details go to the business you called. That is the point of the service.
• AI and voice technology providers — for speech recognition, language understanding and speech synthesis.
• Telecommunications carriers — to carry and route calls and send SMS.
• Hosting and infrastructure providers — to run the service and store data.
• Business tools we use — email delivery, analytics, customer support and accounting.
• Professional advisers — lawyers, accountants and auditors, where needed.
• Anyone we are legally required to disclose to — including law enforcement under a lawful request, or a court order.

If our business is sold or restructured, personal information may transfer as part of that, subject to the buyer continuing to protect it under this policy.

7Storage and disclosure overseas

Some of the providers we rely on — particularly AI and cloud infrastructure providers — store or process information outside New Zealand and Australia, including in the United States, the European Union and other countries where those providers operate.

Before we send personal information overseas we take reasonable steps, as required by Information Privacy Principle 12 of the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 and Australian Privacy Principle 8, to satisfy ourselves that the recipient is required to protect it with safeguards comparable to those in this country — usually through contractual commitments in our agreements with them.

By using Bea, you acknowledge that information may be handled overseas in this way. If this matters to your business, talk to us before you sign up and we will tell you exactly where your data would sit.

8How we keep it safe

• Information is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored on access-controlled systems.
• Access is limited to people who need it to do their job, and is removed when they no longer need it.
• Our providers are chosen in part on their security posture and are bound by contract to protect the information we pass them.
• We keep logs that let us investigate if something goes wrong.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a privacy breach happens that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the affected people and the relevant regulator — the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand, or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in Australia — as the law requires.

9How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, or as long as the law requires — whichever is longer.

When information is no longer needed we delete it or de-identify it.

10Your rights: access and correction

You have the right to ask us for the personal information we hold about you, and to ask us to correct it if it is wrong. These rights come from Information Privacy Principles 6 and 7 of the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, and Australian Privacy Principles 12 and 13.

To make a request, email sales@bedigital.co.nz with enough detail for us to find the information — for example the phone number you called from and roughly when.

• We will confirm we have received your request and respond within 20 working days.
• We may need to verify your identity first, so that we do not hand your information to someone else.
• The request is free. If it is unusually large or repetitive we may charge a reasonable cost, and we will tell you before we do.
• There are limited grounds in the Act on which we can refuse. If we refuse, we will tell you why and how to complain.
• If the information relates to a call you made to a business, we may need to refer your request to that business, because the information is theirs. We will tell you if that happens.

11Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us first — email sales@bedigital.co.nz with “Privacy complaint” in the subject line. We will acknowledge it promptly and aim to resolve it within 20 working days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the relevant regulator:

• New Zealand — Office of the Privacy Commissioner: privacy.org.nz, 0800 803 909.
• Australia — Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: oaic.gov.au, 1300 363 992.

12Cookies and analytics

hibea.nz uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies:

• Necessary cookies — set by WordPress to make the site work.
• Analytics cookies — set by Google Analytics 4 so we can see which pages are useful and where visitors come from. This data is aggregated and we do not use it to identify you personally.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The site will still work. You can also opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s browser add-on.

13Children

Bea is a business service and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If a child calls a business using Bea, their information is handled the same way as any other caller, on behalf of that business.

14Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when the service or the law changes. The date at the top always shows when it last changed. If a change materially affects customers, we will tell you by email before it takes effect.