How to Choose a Professional Transcription Service Provider

There are several factors you should consider when searching for a professional transcription service. The first is often overlooked- do they employ native speakers in the language of your audio or video recording? It's easy to see just the bottom line and make a decision based solely on the lowest cost, but if the quality of the transcript is going to be compromised, it's not worth the savings. It's one thing to say they can transcribe English, but are they native English speakers of your specific dialect of English? The English spoken in India, for example, is very different from English spoken anywhere else.

Hiring a freelancer is hit or miss. You may find an excellent one on sites like freelancer.com, fiverr.com, or elance.com, but for every excellent one, there are at least a dozen that won't work out for you. Freelancers have lower costs, so they can offer their services to you for a little less than a service, but they don't have the quality assurance aspect of a service. Services have more than one worker listening to your audio, which improves the quality of your transcript. A freelancer may also be more difficult to work with, because they are a transcriber first and aren't necessarily business people or customer service specialists. The freelancer route can be full of frustration, or a lucky find. So the question is, do you have the time, and is the cost of your time worth it, to weed through freelancers until you find the right one, if you ever do?

The first thing to consider when looking at price, is whether or not the business spends a lot on advertising and web design. Do you want a transcript, or the most beautiful website and lots of ads all over the internet and trade magazines? If you're looking for competitive pricing, it's best to scratch the largest transcription services off your list. That being said- you don't want to choose a service with poor use of language on their site. Look for typos, misspellings, verb agreement, and the clarity of the verbiage. Odds are, if they can't write high-quality copy for their site, they won't deliver high-quality transcripts.

The next things to look for are that they clearly display their prices upfront and that there are no hidden charges. Many services require that they speak to you first, and one of their first questions will be, "What is your budget?" These services want to set their pricing to use your entire budget. Look for a price list on their website, and read it carefully. Some services charge extra if the audio is "unclear" (by their definition, not yours), the speakers have an accent, if special terminology is used, if you need your transcript formatted in any way other than their template, or to include timestamps in the transcript. A few even charge extra to transcribe video, or if your file isn't one of their approved formats.

So what is a good price? Check out the price comparison chart below of a few leading transcription services.

It's nearly universal for transcription services to offer 98% or greater accuracy. That shouldn't impress you. What you should look for is, how do they back that up? Do they offer a guarantee? Do you get to see the transcript before you pay? How do they handle disputes?

There's only one 'Free to Try' service that I know of, and that's GetTranscribed.com. You don't have to pay upfront, and you get an invoice when you get your transcript. You don't pay until you are satisfied. They put their money where their mouth is with their 100% Satisfaction Guarantee!

Over time, you may find that your needs change, and you need more than transcription. For example, you may need videos captioned or a book, or article, proofread and edited. Or, you may be expanding your business into a non-English speaking market, and need translation skills as well. Does the service you're looking at offer those services? Those add-on services are usually much cheaper, and easier for them to do, at the time of transcription. So, you could save big by using the same service for this.

What about capacity? Are they prepared to take on more audio or video from you in the future? Do they offer contracting or membership plans for on-going clients? Membership plans and contracting are a great way to lower your cost, if you need transcription on an on-going basis.

I, Matthew Ryczko, the writer of this article, am the owner of Get Transcribed, an American online audio transcription and video captioning service. The information I share here comes from researching our market, and from speaking with our clients. Whether you choose Get Transcribed or another service, we want you to find the best transcription service for your needs. I hope this information is very useful to you! Thank you for reading!

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