Everybody’s got a phone these days, and internet access is as ubiquitous as potable water. It’s easy to record business meetings, seminars, employee reviews, and the like, but after all is said and done, you’re left with an hour-long or longer video. You can send them for other people to watch or have somebody watch them take down notes and disseminate the notes to the other participants — or you could have them transcribed so that the recipients get the full picture with the bonus of being digitally searchable. So, let’s talk about why you should use a transcription company for your client meetings, employee reviews, and seminars.
Events And Recordings That Can Be Transcribed
Here are a few instances of business recordings that can benefit greatly from transcription:
1. Employee follow-up: Recording and transcribing company meetings helps remind employees what specific topics, steps, or actions were discussed and helps them plan their next step. This keeps employees on task and focused and leads to less wasted time.
2. Client reviews: Having an accurate recording of your client meetings is an important tool for client follow-up. By recording and transcribing these meetings, you can bring a record of the last discussion to your next client meeting. Clients can physically see what was discussed and decided in the last meeting, which helps the current meeting go more smoothly and run more efficiently. In addition, transcripts of client meetings can be sent to the clients so they have a copy for review at any time.
3. Employee reviews: Just like client reviews, having an accurate copy of what was discussed with an employee makes an employee’s review more precise and concise. Recording any Human Resources matters protects a company or an employee from adverse actions, including legal ones.
4. Seminars and Conferences: Seminars and other conferences are great ways to keep up with the ever-changing business landscape. However, only some have the time or the resources to attend them or allow all their employees to attend. Transcripts of these events can be shared around the office, ensuring that everyone in your business benefits from the knowledge imparted during such times.
5. Publishing: Company meetings, conferences, or seminars can be transcribed and published on the company’s website, newsletter, blog, or anywhere else they want. This allows companies to share current happenings with their customers, shareholders, and the public, allowing them to remain transparent and keep people informed.
Benefits of Having Business Transcription Outsourced
Cutting costs while maintaining quality products and optimal operations is essential to any business. Transcription has a lot of benefits, but the costs of hiring experienced transcriptionists to fill the role may not be the best option for most companies, no matter the size.
To illustrate, transcriptionists earn around $60,000 a year, and you will need more than one to accommodate any reasonable number of business recordings. Aside from the salary, you need to provide them with a decent compensation package that includes medical, dental, vacation days, sick time, and any number of employee benefits that you use to attract talent. And let’s not forget the cost of actually finding and hiring talent, which isn’t easy in today’s highly skilled job market. On top of that, you must provide your transcriptionists with the proper training and equipment — computers, foot pedals, and the like — to do their jobs. Considering all these factors, the expenses of hiring an in-house transcriptionist can easily reach $100,000 per employee per year.
This is where outsourced transcription shines. Why bother with all the hassle of finding, hiring, training, and retaining transcriptionists when you can get the expert services of a transcription service provider for a fraction of the price?
Transcription companies — the good ones, anyway — offer accurate services with superb customer service components and accessibility options. Meetings and other business events can be transcribed verbatim or “cleaned up” according to the client’s wishes or needs. They can be returned in PDF or Microsoft Word through email, an online platform, hard copy, or by CD or flash drive. Transcribing company events or client meetings can be completed in as little as one day, depending on a few things, such as length and audio quality.
Things To Avoid When Looking For Business Transcription Companies
Transcription companies are a dime a dozen, with hundreds operating right now. But like anything else, some are better than others. Here are a couple of things to look out for when finding your transcription provider:
Purely Automated Services
Any transcription service provider offering 100% automated or AI transcription without human intervention for a fee should be viewed with suspicion. After all, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and a few other tech companies have voice typing integration included in their products and services for free (although — and this bears repeating — automated transcription is not accurate, with the best of them only reaching 86% accuracy, or 14 errors for every 100 words). We’re not saying that automated transcription doesn’t have its uses, but transcribing business-related recordings is not one of them (more on that later).
Security Concerns
It’s so easy to pass files from one person to another these days — just attach the recording, send it via email, and wait for the transcripts to arrive the same way. But if that’s how your transcription provider operates, it’s time to look for someone else.
Secure data storage practices and stringent access controls should be the minimum requirements for any transcription provider. They must provide a secure platform for customers to send and receive their transcripts. Business transcription does not have regulatory oversight for data protection, though most companies cover other industries, like legal, law enforcement, or medical transcription. In such cases, you can look for business transcription providers that meet other regulatory compliance requirements, like HIPAA for healthcare and CJIS with legal and law enforcement. This means that the provider has elevated security protections.
Qualities of a Great Business Transcription Provider
Here are some of the best considerations for finding the right transcription provider for client meetings, employee reviews, seminars, and conferences.
Experience and Specialization
Transcription is more than just listening to a recording and writing down what you hear. Comprehension and expertise are important components; they aren’t things you can pick up over the weekend. Transcriptionists with years of experience in business transcription will have no problems taking down contextual information and using it to make the transcripts more accurate. They are familiar with industry jargon and can adhere to style guides and customized formats without fuss. And, of course, the more experience they have, the faster and more efficient things get done. This is why finding a business transcription service provider with years of proven experience is essential.
Accuracy
We briefly touched upon accuracy, but now it’s time to discuss its importance in business transcription. Let’s say an earnings call went well, but a simple transcription blunder with figures resulted in the quarterly earnings becoming $10 million instead of $100 million on the published transcript. First, the SEC will not be happy with that. Even after corrections and damage control are done, the fact remains that incorrect information was published, and the company’s reputation has taken a hit. Perhaps not every transcription error carries such heavy consequences, but why take your chances?
Great transcription companies offer guaranteed accuracy rates, with some going as high as 99% accuracy. It’s in your and your company’s best interest to get the services of an accurate provider.
Fast Turnaround Time
Having accurate transcripts is nice, but not at the expense of them taking forever to get done. A decent business transcription company must be able to balance precision with efficiency and provide their clients with fast turnaround times. Depending on your requirements, the most common durations are between one to two, three to five, and six to ten business days. Of course, they should also be able to accommodate rush projects and 24-hour turnaround times.
Human-powered Transcription
Speaking of the balance between speed and accuracy, quite a few automated and AI-powered transcription providers are available today. They’re fast but not as accurate as human transcription and require human editing and error correction. In most cases, error correction may take just as long as having done the transcription yourself, meaning that you’d have been better off having a human do the transcription in the first place. Business meetings, seminars, and employee reviews transcription require a delicate touch, as there’s no telling what an error can cost.
Customization Options
Business transcription services must be able to offer customizable features such as speaker identification, timestamps, verbatim or cleaned-up transcripts, language preferences, custom dictionaries, punctuation choices, formatting, file format selection, editing tools, and integration options. This allows companies to tailor their transcripts to their specific needs and ensure alignment with their documentary or system requirements, making integrating finished transcripts into their workflow easier.
This doesn’t have to end with file customizations. Transcription companies must also be scalable — able to work with any amount of projects, no matter how big or small, for the appropriate fee.
Assured Security and Confidentiality
One of the most common arguments against outsourcing is security. Having your business recordings sent to a third-party provider opens up additional avenues for data breaches. There’s also the possibility of your vendor selling your information — to a data collection company or, worse, to a competitor. Therefore, it is imperative that you find a trusted and accountable service provider, preferably a U.S.-based company with decades of experience and a long list of clientele.
Furthermore, transcription companies must be able to provide these security features:
- Network security monitoring tools
- Encryption tools
- Network defense tools
- Web vulnerability scanning tools
- Packet sniffers
- Firewalls
- Antivirus software
- Antispyware
- Endpoint protection
- Regulatory compliance with data protection agencies (HIPAA, CJIS)
Ditto Transcripts is a Denver, Colorado-based transcription company that provides fast, accurate, and reliable transcription services for transcribing company or client meetings, individuals, and companies of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote, and ask about our free five-day trial.
