Privacy regulations generally say you should not keep personal data longer than necessary for the purpose you collected it for. That is deliberately open-ended, because a tax record and a website enquiry have very different useful lives. The expectation is that you make a considered decision per data type, write it down, and follow it — not that you keep everything forever or delete everything immediately.
A workable policy is usually short. Name each category of data you hold, state how long you keep it, and give the reason. Enquiries that went nowhere might be deleted after a year. Customer records might be kept as long as the relationship lasts plus whatever your accounting rules require. Chat transcripts might be kept for a few months for quality review. The specifics matter less than having decided and being able to explain it.
Chat data accumulates quietly, which is why it is worth including. A widget that has been on your site for two years holds a lot of conversations and contact details. With Clerkzo, transcripts and leads sit in one place, so applying a retention decision is a matter of housekeeping rather than an archaeology project across several tools.
Related guides
Related terms
Browse all 104 terms- Data ResidencyData residency refers to the country or region where an organisation's data is physically stored, and to any requirement that it stay within a particular jurisdiction.
- Data Processing Agreement (DPA)A data processing agreement (DPA) is a contract between a data controller and a data processor that sets out how the processor may handle personal data on the controller's behalf, what safeguards apply, and what happens when the arrangement ends.
- Encryption at RestEncryption at rest means data is stored in an encrypted form, so that anyone who obtains the underlying storage — a disk, a backup, a database file — cannot read it without the decryption key.
- User ConsentUser consent is a person's freely given, specific and informed agreement to a stated use of their personal data, indicated by a clear affirmative action rather than silence or a pre-ticked box.