A lawsuit has accused Talkdesk and LegalShield of “secretly” listening to, recording, and analyzing customer communications without consent.
This allegation marks the second time in as many months that Talkdesk has been embroiled in a legal matter, with Patagonia – one of the company’s customers – having been sued for a similar offense back in July.
As is the case with Patagonia, LegalShield deploys Talkdesk’s suite of CCaaS offerings to handle all customer communications, including email, chatbot, phone call, and text.
The most recent lawsuit alleges that the legal services provider does not inform customers that their communications are being “tapped,” “intercepted,” and “eavesdropped on” by Talkdesk.
This information is routed to Talkdesk’s servers in real time, where it is transcribed and analyzed by AI tools to discern the context and sentiment of each customer interaction.
The suit argues that all of this is done so in "secret", stating that “neither Talkdesk nor LegalShield obtain consent from consumers who call LegalShield.
LegalShield’s Privacy Policy does not disclose that Talkdesk (or any other third party) is tapping, intercepting, listening to, eavesdropping on, recording, or using customers’ conversations with LegalShield.
“Indeed, the Privacy Policy implies that no such activities occur.”
The suit goes on to claim that while LegalShield’s Privacy Policy states that the company uses a third-party service to collect customer reviews, Talkdesk does not handle these reviews.
For the plaintiff’s lawyers, this disclosure suggests that it is reasonable to assume that LegalShield does not generally use third parties for other services.
Case Notes
The suit has been brought forward by Ronna Crowder, individually and on behalf of “all others similarly situated.”
While a lack of consent is at the crux of Crowder’s complaint, her lawyers have also raised concerns about precisely how their client’s data is being used.
First and foremost, as a legal company, the suit argues that customers of LegalShield often “share some of the most intimate details of their life,” as well as “sensitive financial information,” and do so with the belief that this information will remain confidential.
Crowder’s lawyers also argue that Talkdesk has actually been profiting from the use of data from their client and others.
The suit describes customer data as being “economically valuable” to Talkdesk, as it can be used to “enhance and develop its own products and train its own AI models.”
In support of these claims, the suit includes the following comments from Professor Paul M. Schwartz for the Harvard Law Review:
“Personal information is an important currency in the new millennium. The monetary value of personal data is large and still growing, and corporate America is moving quickly to profit from the trend.
Companies view this information as a corporate asset and have invested heavily in software that facilitates the collection of consumer information.
A Troubling Trend
As discussed above, there are multiple similarities between the LegalShield and Patagonia lawsuits.
In both instances, Talkdesk and the company deploying its technology are accused of obtaining customer data without permission and using it to improve their own offerings.
The financial value of customer data is also referenced in both cases, with the exact same quote from Schwartz actually included in each suit.
However, in spite of the parallels, there are some key differences that contact center vendors should be particularly mindful of.