Conference Transcription Outsourcing – Why Do It and How to Get the Best Results

In-house transcription of a conference can be a massive drain on resources, as it takes a considerable length of time, especially for those who are not transcription experts. But how do you find an outsourced service that’s right for you? This article aims to provide advice on finding a transcription service that provides accurate, timely and complete transcripts. It suggests ways in which the conference organiser can help the transcriptionist to ensure that the transcription is good quality and free of errors.

Book in advance

As a transcriptionist, one thing I would strongly recommend is choosing your transcription service prior to the conference. Obviously your delegates and speakers will want to see the transcript as soon as possible, but a conference is a significant chunk of work to transcribe. If you have, for example, a conference lasting five hours, with the afternoon divided into four separate workshop sessions of 2.5 hours each, and if you want each session transcribed, you’re looking at a total of 12.5 hours of recording. That’s likely to be at the very least 62 hours of work, because it takes much longer to type than to speak. (See my article on affordable transcription for more information on this).  If you can book it in advance of the conference taking place, and agree a turnaround time in advance, you will be on the front foot when it comes to completing a post-conference pack to provide to your delegates and speakers.

Now if you start ringing round transcription companies once you have the recording ready to send, and you’re hoping to have the transcript returned to you in two or three days, you’re probably going to be out of luck. Why? Because competent and established transcription services are likely to be booked up for some time in advance. A good, established transcription company, employing fully trained and competent transcriptionists who are able not just to type but also to proof-read and edit, recognise the correct homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently), and punctuate English correctly, is probably not going to be sitting there waiting for your call. Although you might strike lucky they will probably be booked up for at least a few days!

So if you book in your recording before the conference and agree to send it on a certain date, they will be able to turn it around for you much faster. But do please remember that if your conference date changes then you need to tell your transcription service!

How to choose a good service

Nothing is as reliable as a recommendation, provided it’s a real recommendation and not just ‘referral marketing’ where someone who has never used the service may recommend it because it’s in a marketing group they belong to. However, if you don’t know anyone who can recommend a good service there are a number of other ways to choose wisely. Firstly, have a look at the company’s website: does it mention conference transcription; is the information on the site useful; is the site riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, because if so how good is the transcription likely to be; are there testimonials available?

Then, of course, you’ll need to find out whether the service is available. Whether you phone or email, not whether the transcription services asks you intelligent questions about your recording. Do they ask about recording quality, recording type, clarity of speech, when you need the recording back by, length of recording etc.? If they quote you an hourly rate without asking those questions then you don’t really get a feel for how many hours it will take them, and neither do they.

How to get the best transcription from your recording

The next important point for conferences is that if you are going to have questions from the audience you will really need ‘roaming microphones’ that can be carried around the audience, so that questions are actually audible on the recording. You will also need a good conference recording set-up so that your main speakers can be clearly heard, and if you have a panel question session then you will also need individual microphones for each member of the panel. If you can also provide your transcriptionist with a list of delegates, as well as a list of speakers, this will allow them to refer back to the delegate list to check name and organisation spellings of those who ask questions from the audience. Also, although the chairman frequently reminds people at conferences to please state their name and organisation, they frequently don’t do this! In the heat of the moment they might just say ‘My name’s John Doe and I wanted to ask …’ or even ‘I’m from Energize Corp. and I was wondering …’ With a delegate list the transcriber can find the organisation name or person’s name respectively. If at all possible (and you may be at the mercy of the conference venue here) opt for digital recording, rather than a recording on cassette tapes. Digital recordings have a variety of advantages (please see some of my other articles for details) but importantly they are usually better quality than tapes and they can be worked on by more than one transcriptionist at the same time, meaning that your transcription will be completed sooner.

You will also have a better quality transcription if you’re able to provide the transcriptionist with any supporting material on the conference that you have available as this will help to establish ‘key words’, words that may be not in common usage but particularly relevant to the topic of the conference. A good transcriptionist will also probably be able to search out most unusual words using Google or a similar search engine, but this takes extra time, and if you have already provided material to help time will be saved.