Agent Help is a South African company, built and hosted on South African infrastructure, and designed to help our client businesses process personal information lawfully under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
Our role
When our AI receptionist answers a call on behalf of a client business, that business is the responsible party for the personal information collected, and Agent Help acts as an operator processing that information on the business’s instruction and under a written agreement, as required by POPIA.
Lawful processing
- We only collect the personal information needed to answer calls, book appointments, and send confirmations, reminders and follow-ups.
- Callers are informed, where relevant, that they are speaking with an AI receptionist and that their call may be recorded and processed to fulfil their request.
- Client businesses are responsible for ensuring their own notices and consents meet POPIA’s requirements for their industry (for example, healthcare-specific consent requirements).
Security safeguards
- Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with access restricted to authorised personnel on a need-to-know basis.
- Infrastructure is hosted within South Africa, reducing reliance on cross-border data transfer.
- We maintain incident-response procedures and will notify affected client businesses and the Information Regulator without undue delay in the event of a data breach, as required by POPIA.
Data subject rights
Individuals whose personal information we process have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of that information, and to object to processing, subject to the exceptions set out in POPIA. Requests relating to a specific business’s callers should be directed to that business in the first instance; requests relating to Agent Help’s own records can be sent to our Information Officer.
Our Information Officer
Agent Help’s Information Officer is registered with the Information Regulator of South Africa and can be reached at popia@agenthelp.co.za for any POPIA-related query, complaint, or data subject request.
Retention and cross-border transfer
Personal information is retained only as long as necessary for the purposes described in our Privacy Policy. Where any sub-processor is located outside South Africa, we apply safeguards consistent with POPIA’s conditions for cross-border transfer before any information leaves the country.
