# The paperwork for answering your phone Source: https://help.mucka.ai/ai/the-paperwork-for-answering-your-phone Category: Mucka AI Last updated: 2026-09-08 > When Mucka answers your phone it handles a caller's details on your behalf, so the law asks you to have a data-processing agreement in place. We have prepared it — fill in your business details, read it, and accept. Accepting also moves you onto the new, faster receptionist straight away; everyone moves on Monday 12 October 2026, and past that date an account that has not accepted is not answered until it does. Separate from the agreement for Mucka ringing your customers, and the two differ on where the recording is processed. When Mucka picks up your phone, it is handling somebody else's personal details on your behalf — their number, their address, and whatever they tell it about the job. The law calls you the **controller** of that information and Mucka the **processor**, and it asks the two of us to have a written agreement about it. We have prepared that agreement, along with the two documents that go with it. You fill in a handful of details about your business, read them, and accept. Accepting does **not** switch your receptionist on or off. Your phone carries on being answered exactly as before. This is the paperwork, not a setting. ## What you need before you start - Your registered business name and address, as they appear at Companies House. - Your **ICO registration number**. Every UK business that handles customer data needs one — it is about £40 a year from [ico.org.uk](https://ico.org.uk). If you do not have one yet, get it first; it takes a few minutes. - An email address a member of the public can write to if they want to know what you hold about them. - A Data Protection Officer's details, **if** you have one. Most businesses this size do not, and leaving it blank is a perfectly good answer. ## Doing it 1. Open **Settings → AI Voice Receptionist**, and scroll to **Mucka answers your phone** at the bottom of the first tab. 2. Fill in the details above. If you have already done this for outbound calling, we fill it in from there so you are not typing your ICO number twice. 3. Hit **Review & accept**. Three documents open, with your details already filled in: - a **Data Protection Impact Assessment** — what could go wrong for a caller, and what stops it; - a **privacy notice paragraph** you can paste into your own website's privacy policy; - the **Data Processing Agreement** itself. 4. Read them — ideally with your solicitor — tick the box, and accept. You can download the whole pack as a file at any time, before or after accepting, so you have a copy for your records. ## Where your callers' voices are processed This is the part worth reading properly, because it is the one thing that surprises people. The voice your callers speak to runs on a specialist provider, and that provider processes the audio in the **United States**. That is lawful: they are certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which means the UK government has decided data may be sent to them. Your call recordings themselves are stored by us and deleted automatically after 90 days; the voice provider keeps conversation data for 30. Telephony — the actual phone line — stays on UK and EU infrastructure. **This is different from Mucka ringing your customers.** That agreement keeps everything in the UK and EU, and it still does. The two features genuinely differ on this point, which is exactly why they have two separate agreements rather than one. If you use both, both apply. ## Telling your callers Mucka plays an announcement at the start of every call — *"This call may be recorded for training and quality purposes."* That covers the recording, and it is not the whole job. It does not tell the caller that they are speaking to an AI, that their voice is processed outside the UK, or how to ask what you hold about them. That is what the **privacy notice paragraph** in the pack is for: paste it into your website's privacy policy, so there is somewhere to point anybody who asks. ## Moving to the new receptionist Everyone on the receptionist moves to the new, faster one on **Monday 12 October 2026**. It answers quicker, sounds more natural, and has its own choice of voices. Your number, greeting and settings carry over as they are. You can move sooner. Accepting the agreement above is what moves you: the moment you accept, your calls are answered by the new receptionist, and Mucka asks you once how it should sound — the same voice as your Mucka, or one just for the phone (you can change that any time in **Settings**). Mucka will prompt you in the app with an **Upgrade now** button; if you would rather leave it, tap the **wait** link underneath and it asks once more in the last week. **What happens on 12 October if you have not accepted:** the old receptionist is switched off and your calls are **not answered** until you accept. Callers are told to try you on your usual number instead. If your calls are diverted to your Mucka number, take the diversion off at your phone provider on that day so your own phone rings, then accept the agreement when you are ready and put the diversion back. Accepting takes about a minute and switches the receptionist straight back on. Nothing changes for your callers before that date unless you accept early, and if you do, the only thing they will notice is a better receptionist. ## If the agreement changes If we change something that matters — a new provider, a different country, a change to how long anything is kept — we will tell you before it happens, and you will be asked to read and accept the new version. You also have the right to object to a change on data protection grounds, and if you do, we will not make the change to your account. Until the new version is accepted you cannot change your receptionist's settings. Your phone keeps being answered in the meantime, up to the date we gave you for the change; past that date the receptionist stops answering until you have read and accepted it, as described above. ## Common questions **Do I have to do this?** To set the receptionist up or change how it works, yes. It is a genuine legal requirement rather than a Mucka rule, and the reason it lands on you is that the callers are your customers, not ours. **I already accepted something when I signed up.** That was Mucka's own terms of use. This is a separate agreement about a specific thing — somebody else's personal data, handled by us, on your instruction. **Is this legal advice?** No. We prepared these documents so you are not starting from a blank page, and we recommend your own solicitor reads them before you rely on them.