The short version: AI notetakers like Otter, Fireflies and Fathom are brilliant for saving admin time, but the moment a client clocks that a bot is transcribing the call, they stop saying the honest, offhand things that tell you what’s wrong. You get a tidier transcript and a less useful conversation. Use them, but use them, announce them every single time, and know what you’re giving up in exchange for the summary.
What these tools do (and why every small business is suddenly using one)
Eighteen months ago almost none of my clients used an AI notetaker on calls. Now it’s rare for me to be on a Zoom or Teams call where at least one person doesn’t have Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Read.ai or the built in Zoom AI Companion quietly running.
They join the call, listen, transcribe in real time, and then spit out a summary with action points, sometimes within seconds of you hanging up. Fathom’s whole pitch is that it’s free and unlimited, which is why it’s grown so fast among small businesses who’d never pay for Otter’s Business plan at roughly £13 to £14 a seat a month. Fireflies gives you 800 free transcription minutes a month before you hit a wall. Otter’s free tier caps out at 300 minutes. Once you’ve had one week of back to back client calls you’ll blow through any free plan by Wednesday.
Accuracy is good now, somewhere around 90 to 95 percent on clear audio with one accent in the room. Drop in three people talking over each other, a Scottish accent, a bad connection and a barking dog, and it falls off fast. I’ve had transcripts that turned “we need to revisit the budget” into “we need to revisit the budge it,” which is funny until you’re the one relying on that summary three weeks later to remember what was agreed.
The call where I noticed something had shifted
I was on a discovery call with a marketing director at a mid-sized B2B firm, maybe forty minutes in, and she’d been open, a bit frustrated, telling me honestly that her CEO didn’t rate marketing and she was fighting for budget every quarter. Good, useful, real information. Then she glanced at her screen, saw the little Otter icon sitting there transcribing, and asked “sorry, is this being recorded?”
I said yes, it’s just for my notes. She said that’s fine. And then the conversation changed. Not dramatically, nobody stormed off, but she got careful. The next twenty minutes were more polished, more “on message,” less useful. I got a cleaner transcript and a worse call.
That’s the pattern I’ve now watched play out enough times to trust it. People behave differently in front of a recording, even a friendly, low stakes one. It’s the same reason a candid chat over coffee gets you further than a call where someone’s watching a red dot blink. AI notetakers didn’t invent this, dictaphones did it decades ago, but the difference now is that everyone runs one on every call by default, so the effect is constant rather than occasional.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you these tools will say out loud
The AI notetaker companies will tell you their product makes you more present, because you’re not scribbling notes, you’re just listening. That’s true. What they won’t tell you is that the moment your contact notices it, you often lose more in candour than you gain in attention. You’re trading spontaneity for a tidy PDF.
There’s a second uncomfortable truth here too: that transcript is now a document. If a client ever disputes what was promised, what was quoted, what was agreed on scope, your AI generated transcript can be pulled into that argument, by either side. I’ve seen a freelancer friend get a client refund request partly because a throwaway line in an Otter transcript, “yeah, we can probably squeeze that in,” got treated as a firm commitment months later. Nobody warns you that the casual thing you said to keep the mood friendly is now searchable, quotable and permanent.
The consent problem people skip past
In the UK, recording or transcribing a business call involves both GDPR and, depending on the setup, the Investigatory Powers Act if you’re intercepting a live communication. In practice, for most small business calls, the safe route is simple: say out loud, every time, “I’ve got an AI notetaker running for my own notes, is that alright with you?” Not a line buried in your calendar invite that nobody reads. Said, out loud, at the start of the call.
If you’re calling into US states like California, Florida or Pennsylvania, they’re two party consent states, meaning both people need to agree to a recording, not just you. Get caught skipping this and it’s not just an etiquette problem, it’s a legal one. I mention this because I’ve had at least two consultants tell me they didn’t realise their AI notetaker was technically recording, not just “taking notes,” until a client asked them directly.
How to use an AI notetaker without wrecking your calls
I still use one on most calls now, because the upside on admin time is real. But I’ve changed how I run them after that call with the marketing director.
- Announce it verbally at the start of every single call, not just once with a new client. People forget, and forgetting breeds resentment when they remember later.
- Turn it off for the first five minutes of small talk. That’s often where the real, off the cuff information comes out, before anyone’s thinking about being recorded.
- Don’t let the summary auto push into your CRM without you reading it first. I’ve seen wrong names, wrong figures and one memorably confident hallucinated action point land straight into a client’s file unchecked.
- Delete transcripts after 30 to 60 days unless there’s a genuine reason to keep them, a contract dispute, an ongoing project reference. Sitting on a year of client transcripts is a liability, not an asset.
- If you’re sending the AI summary to the client afterward, read it first. Half the value of a summary is that it looks tidy, so a client will assume it’s accurate even when it isn’t.
None of this is complicated. It’s the same discipline you’d apply to any tool that collects data about people who trust you, which is exactly what this is, whatever the marketing calls it.
Where this fits into your wider AI setup
Notetakers are a small piece of a much bigger shift in how small businesses are running on AI right now, and most owners I talk to have picked up three or four tools separately, an AI notetaker here, a chatbot there, an AI email drafting tool somewhere else, with nobody checking whether they connect or whether the data policies contradict each other. If you’re at that stage where the tools have multiplied faster than your plan for them, that’s usually the point to bring in proper AI implementation help rather than adding a fifth subscription and hoping it settles down on its own.
It’s the same discipline I talk about when I look at how brands like Figma or Mailchimp built systems that scale without losing the human bit, worth reading if you want the wider picture on how Figma built a brand people trust or how Mailchimp turned a utility tool into a loved brand. Tools should serve the relationship, not quietly reshape it.
What I’d tell a client asking whether to bother with one
Yes, use one, especially if you’re the sole person in your business running sales calls, client check ins and supplier negotiations back to back with no assistant to take notes for you. The time saved is real, often an hour or more a week once you stop manually writing up call summaries. But go in with your eyes open about the trade off. You are not just saving admin time, you are changing the texture of every conversation you have, and the people on the other end of the call are adjusting their behaviour whether they say so or not.
I’d rather have four honest, slightly messy calls a week and write my own notes than ten polished, guarded ones with a perfect transcript attached. That’s a personal call every business owner has to make for themselves, but it’s a call worth making, rather than defaulting to “record everything” because the tool is free and sitting there.
Free resource: The Meeting Notes to Action Prompt Pack.
Frequently asked questions
Do I legally have to tell clients I’m using an AI notetaker on our call?
In the UK, yes in practice, because GDPR requires a lawful basis for processing someone’s voice and words, and consent is the cleanest one. Say it out loud at the start of the call rather than burying it in a calendar invite nobody reads.
Which AI notetaker is best for a small business on a tight budget?
Fathom currently offers unlimited free transcription and summaries, which makes it the obvious starting point for solo founders and small teams. Fireflies gives 800 free minutes a month if you want more control over integrations. Move to a paid Otter or Fireflies plan once you’re consistently running more than a handful of calls a week.
Does recording a call really change how honest people are with me?
In my own experience, yes, noticeably. The moment someone notices a transcription tool is running, conversations tend to get more careful and less candid, even on friendly calls. It’s worth weighing against the admin time saved.
Should I delete old AI call transcripts?
Generally yes, after 30 to 60 days unless there’s a specific reason to keep one, such as an active dispute or an ongoing project reference. Old transcripts sitting in your account are a data liability with very little upside.
Related reading: Why Your AI Meeting Notetaker Might Be Breaking the Law (And Killing Your Sales Calls) and Why I Turned Off AI Meeting Notes On My Client Calls (And What I Do Now).
