On this page
  1. Start with why you keep transcripts
  2. A sensible default
  3. How retention works in practice
  4. Before deletion: export what you need
  5. Deletion requests
  6. Pair retention with masking
  7. The takeaway

Chat transcripts are useful: they remind your team what a customer said last month, they feed your knowledge base, they settle disputes. So the default instinct is to keep everything, forever.

That instinct is worth questioning. Every stored conversation is data you have to protect, and privacy laws in many places expect you to keep personal data only as long as you need it.

Start with why you keep transcripts

List the real reasons:

ReasonHow long it usually needs
Continuing a conversation with a returning customerWeeks to a few months
Training the team and improving answersA few months
Turning resolved conversations into knowledge base entriesThe last month or so
Handling disputes or chargebacksDepends on your payment provider’s rules
Legal or regulatory requirementsDepends on your industry and country

The longest real need sets your retention period. “Just in case” isn’t a need.

A sensible default

For many small businesses, 60 to 90 days covers ongoing conversations, team review and knowledge base work. Regulated industries may need longer for specific records — and may be better off exporting those records to a proper archive than keeping everything in the chat tool.

Five steps to a retention policy
  1. Know why you keep them
  2. Set a default period
  3. Export before deletion
  4. Handle deletion requests
  5. Pair it with masking

How retention works in practice

In AskCub, you set retention per site, up to your plan’s limit. Then:

  • each conversation is deleted a set number of days after its last message,
  • messages and attachments are removed together,
  • if you shorten the period, older conversations are removed by the daily clean-up — and the site owner gets a notice with the date first.

Before deletion: export what you need

If a specific conversation matters — a dispute, a complaint, a legal request — export it before it expires. An export includes the messages, timeline events and consent records.

Deletion requests

Customers may ask for their conversations to be deleted. Make sure your team knows how: open the conversation, delete it, and confirm to the customer. Deletion should be permanent, with an audit record that it happened.

Pair retention with masking

Short retention limits how long you hold data; masking limits what you hold. Together they make your chat history much less risky without making it less useful.

The takeaway

Decide why you keep transcripts, set retention to the longest real need, export the exceptions, and let the rest go. Less stored data means less to protect — and more trust from customers.

Tagsretentionprivacydata
Related featureChat Visitor PrivacyYou chatted on a website that uses AskCub: what is stored on your device, what the site can see, how AI and translation work, and how to delete it.See how it works

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