Outsourcing Transcription Services with Arnold San Miguel

Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast. This is Episode 37 and today with Arnold San Miguel we are discussing transcription services opportunities in transcription and how to get best results when outsourcing transcription. So, enjoy the episode there’s lots to learn here.

Derek: Hi and welcome back everybody. I’m joined again today with Arnold San Miguel. Hi Arnold.

Arnold: Hey Derek.

Derek: And today we are going to discuss transcription services. And I suppose by connection content generation. So, as we all know in either B2C and B2B businesses now, content is supremely important and content is really important because of to garner authority, it’s important because of Google algorithms and Google wanting to see that you have a lot of good content on your site. So, the many reasons content is supremely important. One way of generated content is transcription. One that many people overlook. So, we want to discuss that today. And you know no better example I suppose is that we actually get all of our podcasts transcribed and that so that it’s obviously extra content for the website. It’s keyword rich it’s very topic relevant but also different people have different preferred means of absorbing competence or some people like listening to podcast and others like reading or just skimming. So, yeah transcribing is a great opportunity for expanding your content delivery methods. Okay, so getting into that. What are some of the main types and applications for transcription.

So significantly the obvious things are from audio into words. There’s also the big opportunity as well too. There’s a huge amount of YouTube content out there. And you know there’s actually things of value that you can transcribe and make into content which can then be morphed into blog posts and things like that. There’s obviously podcasts that are very commonly transcribed and even you know it’s surprising where you can find value within conversations and often I find that conversations can be. Incredibly value, valuable if you can actually revisit them. So, you know try recording conversations and then transcribing them they might then need to post-editing. But there’s you know I think there’s huge value that people overlook in the conversations I have and the interactions I have. And then they’re just lost you know because they’re not recorded.

What other applications are there. So as well we have things more highly skilled transcriptions which is a different specialty in itself which is often medical transcriptions is a big part of the transcription industry. And also, Sound note transcription and things like that. And Arnold, we have been involved in transcriptions a little bit and so you’re quite familiar with the costs and services of the transcription world. Do you want to give us some insight into that and how it works?

Arnold: Yeah. Normally there are a lot of services out there that provides transcription services and the usual rate that you would see popping up in your monitor would be a dollar for every minute transcribed. Now that’s normally the usual they rate the turnaround time varies from a day to three days depending on the urgency or the need. But there are other more cost-effective ways to transcribe and for us actually I think we’re paying a little under 60 cents per minute. But that also includes summarization of whatever we’re talking about. So that’s a very big difference in terms of the traditional online services that you’re getting out there.

Derek: Okay. Interesting. And so, do you know Arnold because it’s incredible actually what is out there now and Google. I’m not sure people are aware of this but Google Docs is actually a lot of AI transcription that is free and I actually have a hunch a lot of these companies might actually do that initially and then just post-edit to make sure of accuracy. Do you know if that is sort of prevalent in the industry at all?

Arnold: Yeah well based on my freelancer experience people I’ve dealt with freelancing they normally do that the process that you mentioned where they have this system or tool that does the initial transcription for them and then they then do the second layer of editing and then if it’s an agency normally their supervisor or their manager does the third level of filtering just to ensure that you get a 100 percent accuracy for the file that you sent them.

Derek: Right. And in that sense, isn’t that a fantastic example of outsourcing and the aspect of when you specialize in a role or when you access a company that specializes in a role they are far better at doing that role than you would be because you know there you’ve just mentioned effectively like a trickle filter system. Okay so it’s done by computer and it’s done by the first editor and then it is checked two other times. So, these systems command can add a lot of value but actually produce output the very cost-effective rates. Okay great.

And, so let’s have a look at you know. Moving right along then. Let’s have a look at exactly the pros and cons of outsourcing your transcription service versus doing it in-house. Okay, so I mentioned that you could get the initial draft done for free likely in Google Docs so some other even Word. And you know but then this is a lot more work to it really. So, the first I suppose four main points is if you’re doing it in-house there. People aren’t going to be as specialized and it’s going to be a bit of a drudge and there’s going to be other jobs to get to. So, by outsourcing it to a specialist it’s absolutely likely that it’ll get done better, quicker and most likely even cheaper than you could produce for yourself.  You got anything to add to that Arnold.

Arnold: Yeah for the second one you know if you’re doing this in-house and then all of a sudden, your staff resigns or decides to go to another place and that’s going to be a problem because you would then have to train someone else and then that someone else needs to properly you know train or master the art of transcribing which makes the process longer for you.

Derek: Yeah absolutely. And the next one then as well is you know with a lot of these services if you have staff on hand then you have to pay their salary whether they are being efficient or not. You have to pay their sick leave and holiday leave. Whereas actually if you just go to a professional service for transcription you will pay a dollar per minute or similar. And you know that that’s all you’re going to pay and you’re going to get that output for that price so cost contained and very transparent which is helpful.

Arnold: Yeah and then the next one is sort of related to the previous ones we mentioned where and if your in-house staff goes on holiday at least if you are offshoring this to an agency or a specialist you don’t have to pay any additional cost to them because you’re paying per minute transcribed. Very transparent, very clear transaction.

Derek: Yeah, that right, it takes the uncertainty out of it, doesn’t it? And also, if there’s an emergency. But also, you know there’s a lot of these tasks where if you don’t automate it and often outsource it then they can get pushed to the back of the queue and then before you know it you haven’t transcribed what you intended to and then you actually haven’t produced that content. So, there’s a lot of. It creates a lot of sort of failsafe redundancy by creating good systems which involve strategic outsourcing. Great and just by rounding off we have been talking now for about 8,9, 10 minutes. And it’s interesting to know that there’s around about 125 words spoken per minute. Okay, so you know a long full blog article is you know whatever it is between sort of a thousand words and 5000 words. And so, in the 10 minutes we’ve been chatting there’s about a twelve hundred fifty-word transcription there which is pretty valuable content if you think about it. So, do consider transcription and also consider outsourcing for executing that. Do you have any more thoughts, Arnold?

Arnold: Yeah. Well basically for transcription just keep in mind that this is not rocket science and you know anyone with a degree or a university degree can do this. It just takes time which is what essentially, you’re paying for. You’re paying for you to focus more on other tasks and have someone else do the time-consuming work of doing a transcription.

Derek: Yeah that’s a very good point and that is one that we hop on about a lot. It’s, it is actually a bit of a mind-numbing process, this. And you don’t want to get stuck in that. And if you can try and outsource the dare I say lower value lower complexity items. Yeah that’s a great point. Okay. Thank you, Arnold. And we’ll see you next time.

Arnold: Thanks, Derek.

Okay, hope you got some good value from that. And if you want any of the show notes or summaries then go to outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode37. And if you have any questions at all about outsourcing, transcription or any other things t do with outsourcing please e-mail us at [email protected]. Thanks.