Do I have to tell customers they are talking to a bot?

Owners ask this as a legal question, but the useful answer is a practical one. Canadian rules on misleading representations already apply to how you present your business, and privacy law expects you to be open about how customer information is handled. A bot that pretends to be "Sarah from the office" is the kind of thing that turns a small complaint into a big one.

The bigger cost is trust. Customers forgive a bot that says it is a bot and hands them to a person quickly. They do not forgive finding out halfway through a dispute that the friendly person who promised a callback was never a person at all.

The fix is one sentence at the start of the conversation, and a clear way out: "Text HUMAN and the owner will call you back." Then make sure someone actually does. The disclosure is cheap; the hand-off is what earns the trust.

If you are setting up an auto-reply or a phone assistant, write that line first, before you write anything clever. It is the part customers remember.