Limit agents ability to listen to recordings

Dear @Sean Chuang

Thank you for your update on call recording access control. 
I appreciate the suggestion of using custom roles to manage ticket access. 

However, in our Enterprise+ plan, there is currently no option to restrict access to stored call recordings. 

While we can limit live call listening to specific roles, 
agents still have access to recorded calls within tickets.
 

Compliance Concerns (GDPR & TKG §88 – Germany)

In Germany, strict data protection laws prohibit unauthorized access to call recordings:

• Call recordings contain personal data and should only be accessible to necessary roles (e.g., supervisors).
• Listening to a colleague’s calls without consent may violate GDPR & telecommunications secrecy laws.
• If no explicit employee consent exists, unrestricted access could be legally problematic.
   

The best practice would be to (1)  limit access or (2) implement automatic deletion.

Feature Request: 

Instant Deletion After Transcription (2)

We highly value the transcription feature, as it improves efficiency and accelerates ticket resolution. 
However, enabling transcription requires enabling call recordings. 

The main issue is that we can only auto-delete recordings after 24 hours, which does not fully address compliance concerns.

Proposed Solution:

📌 New setting under Call Recording/Automatic Deletion:
➡  Instant Deletion of Call Recordings (after transcription is completed).

[zendesk.com/admin/channels/talk_and_email/talk -→Tab: Call Recording/Automatic deletion]

This would ensure compliance while allowing teams to benefit from transcription. 
We believe this improvement should be prioritized before reworking role-based access controls.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Best regards,
Willi

I agree with Willi,

There needs to be a solution to this ASAP. It is not only in Germany that companies need to abide by privacy laws. Generally privacy is being more and more scrutinised for compliance and having too many users within Zendesk with access to call recordings jeopardises privacy not only for customers but also internally for employees. 

I don't think auto deletion is the right way to go even though it could be a solution. It would be better to be able to limit the access based on role eg Admin has access but Agent does not or something similar. If this is indeed on the roadmao for 2025 I would like to see it in the priority line. 

Cheers, 

Hi Josefa,

We are in the discovery phase to revamp overall roles and permissions in the voice product. This is not in the 2025 roadmap from a development standpoint and will be prioritized alongside other items for 2026.

Thanks

Rohan

Hey @rohan11 ! I hope you’re doing well. 

I noticed you commented on Josefa's review (which was actually just a comment on my post ;) -  but I wanted to bring our suggestion back into the conversation.
 

What do you think about adding a new option under Call Recording:

➡ Instant Deletion of Call Recordings (after transcription is completed)?

We believe this change should take priority before you dive into revising the role-based access controls.
 

I totally get that many feature requests might be on the back burner compared to the exciting AI developments you have in pipeline or planned. 

I don’t want to step on any toes! But from my perspective as a projectmanager, adjusting the deletion function seems like it could be a more manageable task compared to overhauling permission and role management.
 

What are your thoughts on this proposal?
 Do you see it being feasible to implement it in a sprint?

Or do you think we’ll have to navigate this legal grey area until after 2026? 
Looking forward to hearing your insights!

Hello, I see the update was already a year ago. Any news or updates about this topic? This is also very important for us to know if this function is coming. Thank you :)

Hi folks, 

We understand how important it is to many customers to have more control over who can listen to recordings. Unfortunately, we were unable to work on this in 2025. We are trying to prioritise this in 2026, and we will keep this post updated.