Feedback clauses: can you use customer suggestions and tickets for AI?

What does a typical SaaS feedback clause actually grant?#

A typical SaaS feedback clause grants the vendor a royalty-free, perpetual license, or sometimes an assignment, to use suggestions, enhancement requests and recommendations that customers give about the service. Its purpose is to stop a customer from later claiming ownership of a feature it suggested.

The grant is usually broad in duration and narrow in subject. It covers ideas about the product. Many clauses say expressly that feedback excludes Customer Data or Confidential Information, and some limit the license to improving the vendor's own products and services. The exact verbs matter, so read them closely.

Why support tickets usually fall outside the feedback clause#

Support tickets usually fall outside the feedback clause because they are submitted through the service and therefore match the contract's definition of Customer Data. A ticket saying the export button fails on large reports contains a suggestion, but it also contains the customer's account details, screenshots of its records, user names and sometimes information about the customer's own clients.

Those parts are governed by other terms. The confidentiality clause limits disclosure. The data processing agreement typically restricts processing to providing the service. The customer data clause usually confirms the customer owns its data. When those terms conflict with a feedback grant, a precedence clause often says the DPA or the main agreement wins.

So the honest answer to whether a feedback clause lets you use tickets for AI is usually no for the ticket as a whole, and possibly yes for the extracted suggestion. That distinction decides how a ticket archive gets scoped.

Which records a feedback clause can reach#

A feedback clause reaches different records with different strength, so map each record family before deciding anything.

The last row deserves attention. Internal notes, engineering issues and resolution steps your own team wrote are often the strongest material in a support archive, and they do not depend on the feedback clause at all once customer details are removed.

How to assess your contracts before licensing ticket data#

Contract review for ticket data works best by cohort. Customers on the same paper during the same period can be scoped together, while customers on negotiated agreements are reviewed one by one.

• 1Pull every customer contract form used across your history, including click-through terms, order forms and negotiated enterprise agreements.
• 2Find the feedback, customer data, confidentiality, DPA and precedence clauses in each form and note their effective dates.
• 3Flag negotiated agreements that struck or narrowed the feedback clause.
• 4Check for aggregated or de-identified data clauses, which may support uses the feedback clause does not.
• 5Check for clauses that bar AI training on customer data, which override the rest for those customers.
• 6Scope record families by contract cohort instead of deciding once for the whole archive.

Should you rewrite the feedback clause to cover AI?#

Rewriting the feedback clause to cover AI training can work for future contracts, but it does not reach records collected under old terms, and doing it quietly creates risk. In a February 2024 post, FTC staff said that a company which starts using consumers' data for AI training and discloses the change only through a quiet, retroactive edit to its terms of service or privacy policy may be acting unfairly or deceptively.

If you change the terms, do it openly, prospectively and with clear notice, and keep dated versions of every form. Counsel can advise on how changes apply to existing customers, especially those on negotiated agreements with their own amendment clauses. A clear feedback ownership clause going forward still will not turn ticket content into feedback.

A clearer clause separates the idea from the data. Illustrative clause, a drafting example for discussion with counsel rather than recommended language: Customer may provide suggestions, enhancement requests and other comments about the Services (Feedback). Vendor may use, modify and incorporate Feedback into any of its products and services without obligation to Customer. Feedback does not include Customer Data, and any Customer Data contained in a communication that also contains Feedback remains subject to the Customer Data, confidentiality and data processing terms of this Agreement.

If the business wants broader rights over de-identified data, that belongs in a separate, clearly labeled clause with its own de-identification standard and notice, not folded into the feedback definition.

Illustrative: a property management software company scopes its tickets#

Illustrative: a fictional vertical SaaS company serving property management firms runs a Zendesk help desk, an in-app idea board and Jira issues linked to many tickets. Its click-through terms include a feedback clause limited to improving the service and a DPA that restricts processing to providing it.

The company scopes in its own engineering issues, internal resolution notes and the idea board, where posts were made under separate board terms and personal details can be removed. Ticket bodies and attachments are excluded for now. Counsel separately reviews the aggregated data clause to see whether de-identified, aggregated ticket patterns can be added later. The idea board and engineering records move forward as the first package.

How SourceX reviews feedback and customer data clauses#

SourceX reads feedback, customer data and DPA clauses together during the Rights step of the SourceX five-step transaction, and scopes ticket archives by contract cohort. The initial fit check collects only metadata, such as systems, years of history and the contract forms in use.

The clauses relied on and the records excluded are recorded in the SourceX Evidence Packet, so the supplier approves a package whose rights basis is written down and the buyer can see it.