The role of transcription services within a business

Does your business use transcribers to produce intelligible content based on speeches, events or discussions?

The process of transcription involves listening to an audio file, which is then typed out into a written script-style format and should be proofread to a high standard before being ready to submit for your business purposes. Here we take a look at some uses and considerations for transcription services in the corporate world.

Where transcription is used

Focus groups are a staple part of the market research process and rely on a group of people providing feedback on a product, service or just an idea to explore. As the group bounces opinions back and forth, a picture starts to emerge which can be useful for marketing teams to consider when putting together their promotional campaigns. Focus groups are often recorded either as an audio or video file, but the information can be made sense of more clearly when reported as a script to be distributed to team members and influencers.

Moving over to the legal industry, and from court proceedings to depositions, lawyers rely heavily on UK transcription services to provide a written account to be included when compiling case notes. Witness statements may be recorded and then transcribed and printed out to give to members of a jury, which leaves no room for misinterpretation. 

Other uses of transcription in business include turning a podcast into a blog post, or transcribing a popular YouTube video into an informational guide which can improve your company’s SEO strategies. Additionally, if your employees are attending an industry conference or event, you may be able to record workshops, seminars or even the keynote speech and have these transcribed when you return to the office.

Avoid automated software

There’s a piece of software available for everything these days, and speech to text applications are becoming more common. But there’s yet to be a piece of software that is a match for a human transcription service, which provides an accuracy rate of more than 99%. Human transcribers are able to decipher dialects and accents, which can be challenging for speech to text apps. Additionally, where a person stammers or hesitates in their verbal exchanges, using plenty of ‘ums’ in conversation, these are usually omitted from a quality transcribed document – in comparison, software would find it hard to determine what should be left in the finalised script and what is unnecessary.

Secure transcription services

Many industries are heavily regulated, so in order to satisfy your compliance team, it’s important that transcription activity uses only the most secure transfer of audio files, both internally and externally. SSL as an encryption standard is an absolute must to ensure that sensitive data cannot be obtained or tampered with.

Transcription services can be provided inhouse so long as the company has transcribers that possess the right level of skills, with attention to detail, excellent proofreading abilities and the ability to produce scripts quickly when required. Alternatively, often a more cost-effective approach is to outsource your transcription needs to a specialist organisation who can deliver the finished and polished project back to you securely in a short space of time.