My Customer Called Me After I Left. Does That Violate My Nonsolicitation Agreement?

Short answer: possibly, yes — and “they called me” is a weaker defense than almost everyone expects. A great many Wisconsin non-solicitation clauses bar you from soliciting, diverting, or accepting business from a protected customer. If your clause contains the word accept, then taking the work is restricted even when you did nothing to get the call.

This is the most common misunderstanding in this area of Wisconsin law, on both sides. Employees assume inbound contact is safe. Employers assume any contact is a breach. The answer is in the exact words of your clause, and in three limiters that most people never read.

Why isn't an inbound call automatically safe?

Because a non-solicitation clause is not always limited to solicitation. The common Wisconsin drafting reaches three separate acts — soliciting, diverting, and accepting — and only the first requires you to have made the approach. Accepting business is passive by definition, which is precisely why employers include it.

So the first question is never “who called whom.” It is what your clause actually prohibits. If it bars solicitation alone, an unprompted inbound customer is a real defense. If it bars acceptance too, that defense mostly disappears and the analysis moves to whether the customer is protected at all.

Which customers does the clause actually protect?

This is where employees usually have more room than they realize. A well-drafted Wisconsin clause carries limiters, and each one is a line the employer has to prove it falls inside:

• A lookback window. Typically customers the company served in the twelve months before you left. Someone you worked with three years ago is often outside it.
• Substantial contact, or specialized knowledge. The clause commonly reaches only customers you personally dealt with, or ones you learned confidential specifics about. A name on a company-wide list you never touched is usually not covered.
• A defined duration. Two years is common. Once it runs, it runs.

And if there are no such limiters — if the clause simply bars all contact with every customer indefinitely — that is not a stronger clause for the employer. Under Wis. Stat. § 103.465 a restraint broader than reasonably necessary is void in its entirety, and Wisconsin courts will not rewrite it into something reasonable. Overreach in the drafting is the employee's best argument.

What if I just tell them I've moved?

Be careful. An announcement genuinely limited to the fact of your new position is treated differently from a pitch, but the line is thinner than it sounds and it moves depending on what you say next. A message that names your new employer, describes what it does, and invites a conversation is a solicitation in substance whatever it is called.

The safer course while a covenant is running is to let the customer initiate, keep a record of who did, and get the clause reviewed before you respond to anything beyond a greeting.

What should I do right now?

• Find the clause and read the verbs. Solicit only, or solicit, divert, and accept? That single distinction decides most of this.
• Write down the sequence. Who contacted whom, on what date, by what channel, and what was said. Contemporaneous notes are worth considerably more than a recollection months later.
• Check whether this customer is even covered. Lookback period, substantial contact, specialized knowledge.
• Do not respond substantively yet. Answering a business inquiry can itself be the accepting the clause prohibits.
• Tell your new employer. They may share exposure if they encourage it, and they are entitled to know.