Customer Contract FAQs

Last updated: July 12, 2024

These SOCi Customer Contracts FAQs (“FAQs”) provide background information to give you a better understanding of our offerings and aid your review of our agreement, DPA, and other legal documents.  We’ve outlined some common questions about our agreement, products, and services and hope these FAQs will provide some helpful context as you review our agreement. Any capitalized terms used in these FAQs are as defined in the agreement (available at www.soci.ai/legal). These FAQs are provided for informational purposes only and do not form part of your agreement with SOCi. 

SOCI SERVICES AND PLATFORM

What Does SOCi Sell?

SOCi offers an all-in-one Co-Marketing SaaS Platform that allows customers to manage their online social media and marketing activities.  SOCi is a cloud-based Software as a Service (“SaaS”) application provided over the Internet, and all SOCi customers enjoy the same version of the SOCi platform. SOCi’s platform is a conduit for you to manage your social media activity (think Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.), respond to reviews (think Yelp, Google, etc.), and manage business listings information (think NextDoor, Google+, TripAdvisor, etc.) under one umbrella (collectively referred to here as the “Networks”). SOCi provides the tools to manage your presence on various Networks but does not have control over or manage the Networks themselves.

How does SOCi work with the Networks and Third-Party Services?

SOCi’s Platform is a conduit for you to manage your social media and marketing activities via your Customer Account.  To publish to the Networks, you must log into your Network accounts. SOCi also allows you to connect third-party systems and tools (“Third Party Services”) to your SOCi Account.  These Third-Party Services may include connecting an archiving tool (think Global Relay, Proof Point, or Smarsh), your CRM, or another system or tool you already use but want to connect to the Services for optimized analytics.

Why is it Important that all information I provide to SOCi is accurate and true? We work closely with our partners, including Google, Facebook, and Yelp, and following their rules is a must for us. Ensuring the information you provide is accurate is key because it helps us maintain good relationships with our partners and keeps our community thriving. Plus, posting false or misleading information could result in contract termination—we count on your honesty to keep our ecosystem transparent and trusted.

What is SOCi’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)?

SOCi’s AUP is our policy that makes it easy for all your Users to understand what you can and can’t do while accessing the Subscription Services. We need everyone to follow these rules to ensure that the Networks allow all our customers to publish to their sites via the Subscription Services.

What is SOCi’s Uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA), and Can It be Modified?

SOCi strives for an uptime of 99.95% (excluding scheduled downtime of the Networks, Third Party Services, and AWS/GCS). Our SLA is incorporated into our agreement, and we provide access to the subscription services as outlined in our SLA. All SOCi customers enjoy the same version of the SOCi platform, so we can’t modify our SLA on a customer-by-customer basis as we need to scale our operations uniformly across our entire customer base.

OUR AGREEMENT AND DPA

Why Use SOCi’s Agreement and DPA?

Our agreement is carefully drafted to accommodate and describe the unique features of our products and services, including definitions and obligations that flow from Network partners, our proprietary rights, and your rights and obligations when using the SOCi platform. The SOCi platform is unlike other SaaS products in that it processes a blend of public data hosted on the Networks alongside private customer data, which in turn requires specially crafted DPA language. Our DPA is tailored to our privacy and security practices, ensuring that it aligns with how we handle data across all customers. As a SaaS provider, customizing our privacy and security practices for each customer isn’t feasible or scalable.  Our DPA is designed to meet legal requirements, industry standards, and the specific needs of our services, providing a solid framework for safeguarding Covered Personal Information.  Using our agreement and DPA is the fastest way to get started on the SOCi platform.

How Does SOCi’s Indemnity Clause Protect both Parties?

We do indemnify our Customers for any third-party IP infringement claims you may receive as a result of using the SOCi Services. We stand behind the SOCi platform and our Services and will defend against such claims.  We also require that Customers indemnify us for any third-party claims resulting from your breach of our AUP.

Does SOCi offer Termination for Convenience?

SOCi’s agreement is evergreen; our order form dictates the subscription term.  SOCi does not allow the termination of an order form for convenience.  SOCi sets its prices based on a committed term.  The longer the subscription period (without the right to terminate for convenience), the better the price.  Also, SOCi dedicates time and resources to you for the committed subscription term to ensure you have a successful experience partnering with SOCi and using the SOCi platform.

Can You Help Me Understand the WCAG Disclaimer for Local Pages/Locator?

If you have elected Local Pages/Locator, SOCi creates your Local Pages/Locators (“Pages”) and maintains these pages for you.  Depending on your region and where your Pages can be accessed and/or services are sold, these pages may be subject to certain accessibility laws.  The Pages are coded to comply with WCAG 2.1 and 2.2AA standards, and if requested, we monitor compliance with these standards during the term of your agreement with us. Depending on whether you choose WCAG-compliant or non-compliant pages, disclaimer language provided by SOCi’s external accessibility counsel is added to your agreement.

SOCI GENIUS AND AI SERVICES

Can you Help Me Understand SOCi’s Genius AI Add-On Features?

SOCi’s Genius AI, powered by AI/GAI, features and products may be enabled for any of our core product offerings on the Platform (as they become publicly available). Enabling Genius will enable you to automate some repetitive tasks and receive suggestions on content creation for your review and approval (human interaction).  You can learn more about SOCI Genius at www.soci.ai/genius-ai/.

Does SOCi use third-party AI services, and if so, which ones?

SOCi currently uses OpenAI for its AI services.

Does SOCi train AI models on customer data, or fine-tune AI on customer data?

SOCi does not train third-party models on customer data and has contractually agreed with third parties that it will never permit the sharing of customer data to train their models. SOCi may use customer data to fine-tune customers’ own models but will never use customer data to enrich, fine-tune, or train any SOCi models or models of other SOCi customers.

DATA OWNERSHIP AND USE

Do I Own all of the Data I Upload to the Subscription Services?

You own all of the Customer Content you upload to or curate via the Subscription Services, including the Input and Output created via the AI Services (subject to any 3^rd party rights).  What you can’t own is SOCi data or SOCi Content (this is proprietary to us), External Content (that is owned by 3^rd parties), or any other third-party content that you may access via the Subscription Services.

What Kind of Data is Processed on the SOCi Platform?

Depending on which products you subscribe to (https://www.soci.ai/products/), the data we collect and process may include your public-facing social media posts and review responses and public-facing social media postings and reviews about you and your business.  The data collected may or may not be personal information or personally identifiable information depending on the information posted by individual users to your social media pages, messenger, SOCi Chat messages, or similar social media messaging tools.  Keep in mind, that while the SOCi platform is a conduit for you to manage your social media presence, the actual content posted to the Networks by you, your customers, or visitors to your Network sites and pages is governed by the policies of the Networks, not SOCi.

DATA PRIVACY AND SECURITY

Does SOCi comply with Privacy Laws?

SOCi complies with CCPA/CPRA (as a processor), is self-certified under the EU-US DPF, adopts the SCCs where there is no adequacy decision in place (including EU, UK, and Swiss), and other applicable privacy laws that may apply to our role as a processor.  If we are processing personal data on your behalf, our Global DPA will apply.

How Does SOCi Protect My Data?

SOCi’s SaaS product is hosted on a private virtual cloud, and all our customers’ data share the same physical environment, with each individual customer’s data only visible to that customer.  Use of the SOCi platform does not normally involve highly sensitive data, as we typically handle social media posts, RSS feeds, and messaging (as applicable) for social media networks and business listings sites.  SOCi holds a SOC2 Type II certificate, ISO 27001, and ISO 27701 certificates.  You may request our SOC2, ISO 27001, and ISO 27701 certificates once annually under your existing Agreement or a signed MNDA (if you are not yet a customer).

What About Data Transfers Outside of the U.S. or E.U.? How is Cross-Border Data Handled?

Depending on your use of the Services and where your Users or Locations are, your use may be global, and data may be transferred internationally in accordance with applicable data protection laws. We ensure compliance by utilizing approved mechanisms, such as Standard Contractual Clauses, Data Privacy Framework, or other legal means.

What if I Want to Limit Processing of My Personal Data to Only in the U.S.?

We are hosted on AWS East (Virginia).  We currently have engineers, implementation, and customer support teams outside of the United States. The list is included in our Sub-Processor List available at  https://www.soci.ai/subprocessors/.  We do request that the countries where our staff currently resides is considered approved to ensure that we are able to support your use of the SOCi Platform.  Limiting processing activities to only the U.S. will not allow us to implement or provide support for your use of the Services.

Can I Request Access To or Deletion of Personal Data?

As the custodian of your SOCi Account, you can modify or delete personal data that you upload directly into the SOCi Platform (not the Networks or any third-party system you connect to your SOCi Account).  If you receive a Data Subject Request (DSR) from one of your end consumers to delete their data, we can help you respond to the DSR by deleting the applicable end consumer’s personal data (if we have any of the personal data that you have uploaded to the Services).

How Long Will Personal Data Be Retained?

We retain personal data only as necessary to provide our services and as required by law. Any personal data uploaded to your SOCi Account will be retained until you terminate your agreement with us. Once your agreement terminates or expires, all data in your SOCi Account will be deleted within 90 days.  Please note that even if personal data is deleted from your SOCi Account and our systems, any personal data you have on the Networks or any third-party system will remain on those sites/systems.  We only manage personal data for the systems we control (or sub-processors we have contracted with).