Chances are you’ve attended a conference or a meeting that you couldn’t fully concentrate on, for various reasons. Perhaps you were preoccupied with jotting down notes or found yourself working from home and had to deal with children needing your attention. How would you then obtain the critical points of the discussion?
What You Need to Know About Transcription Services
A transcription service converts speech, whether live or recorded, into a text format (more info). Many companies make use of this service today, including those in the insurance, medical, education, and legal fields. These businesses understand the need for interviews, conferences, seminars, and more to be converted into shareable and editable documents.
The document that results from transcription can appear differently based on a client’s needs. Some prefer the transcript to contain a speaker’s every single utterance, even if it’s a false start, stammer, vocabulary mistake, and so on. This type is what the industry calls verbatim transcription, and it even records non-speech sounds such as applause, dial tones, etc. Companies that prefer verbatim transcripts include the police force and legal firms.
On the other hand, most parties that make use of transcription services opt for clean transcripts. These also contain words from a speech. However, they do not include unnecessary utterances. If you’re getting a podcast transcribed, for example, you would pick clean transcription.
Before the introduction of cassette tapes and portable recorders, transcription looked very different. In the 1960s and prior, secretaries had to write down everything discussed in meetings as they happened. Many had advanced skills, such as shorthand.
Today, the landscape is poles apart. One can record speech with a recording app on their smartphone and send the recording to a transcription service that will perform the audio-to-text conversion.
The Tremendous Business Value of Transcription Services
It’s hard to deny that most companies need transcription services if they want to maximize their potential. Let’s look at the many benefits that come from getting your business meetings, interviews, and calls converted into text.
Engaged Participants and More Fruitful Conversations
There is nothing more annoying than holding a meeting where the participants are unable to focus because they’re too busy jotting down notes. A discussion will bring forth more value if people find themselves more engaged.
The next time you have a conference call, try this: inform everyone that they will receive a transcript of the meeting once it is over. This way, they will fully concentrate on what each speaker is saying. You will notice that people will form better questions, facilitate better dialogs, and come up with greater ideas.
Higher Inclusivity and Wider Dissemination of Information
Nearly 20% of the world’s population lives with hearing loss. Therefore, you will be doing your company a favor by including transcripts alongside video or audio recordings. Aside from showing the disabled that you care for their needs, you’re also getting their valuable input.
Content Variety for Better Reach
When you upload an audio recording on your website, that’s basically all you have. Conversely, when you include a transcript on the same page, your audience will have a separate way to consume your content. They will appreciate text as a reference when they have issues catching certain words due to overlapping conversations, background noise, etc.
In addition, you can use a transcript to create other types of content to share on various platforms. Let’s take social media as an example. Here, you can pull quotes and soundbites and use them to create attention-grabbing visual posts. That isn’t all. You can simultaneously reach your email subscribers by converting the transcript into a weekly newsletter.
Increased Organic Traffic to Your Website
Let’s face it; we all crave brand recognition, according to Hubspot. If people do not know of your company, they will not realize all the great products and services you can offer. How do you increase brand presence?
You’ve heard of how businesses, even big corporations, are providing valuable content on their websites. A business site today doesn’t just have pages and pages of products. Many companies are turning to blogs as a means to share knowledge and rise as an expert in their field.
Your business can employ this strategy, too. If you recently held an interesting panel discussion, upload a recording of that onto your website. Pair that audio or video file with a transcript. Subsequently, people who are searching for topics that relate to your event will find themselves landing on your site. This SEO method is an excellent way to build your brand name and visibility.
Where to Find Reliable Transcription Services
We’ve just scratched the surface of how businesses can benefit from transcription services. Nonetheless, it’s vital to know that the quality of your transcripts matters greatly. You do not have to run a multi-million-dollar company to understand the importance of accuracy.
So how do you locate a transcription service that can deliver promptly? Let’s not forget that everyone works on a budget. You do not want to spend more than you have allocated. Well, you’re in luck. The competition is stiff in this arena. Perform a quick Google search, and you’ll find quite a handful of transcription companies on the web.
The question is, which one will fit your needs? First of all, let’s establish that if accurate transcripts are a priority, you need to go for human-based transcription services. These are the best at deciphering accent-heavy speech, working with distorted audio or loud background noises, and correctly interpreting industry jargon.
In your quest for a provider, you might be bombarded with links to automated transcription tools. You can give those a try, but you’ll soon realize that AI isn’t quite where it needs to be. If you need more information on this topic, check out one of the top providers in the market, GoTranscript.
Will Your Business Survive Without Transcription Services?
Your company might be able to fend off the competition without employing transcription services, but it surely won’t come out on top. Transcripts mean improved brand recognition, fruitful follow-ups for your meetings, better product analysis, and a higher level of customer service. Those benefits will result in your business rising through the ranks.