Geek Speak

Dictation\Transcription Made Convenient and Cheap by Using Something You Already Own: Your Phone

~by Troy Henley, Columbus Bar Association

Automatic Transcription
When you hear the words “automatic transcription”, the first thing that may come to mind is the software suite called Dragon Naturally Speaking. Not a bad program at all….but you have to tweak the software a little and speak with an annunciated, staccato manner. That inevitably restricts your free flowing thoughts. The need for a PC also limits your ability to dictate, you don’t have the flexibility of dictating while on the go. What if a human were performing the transcription instead of a software program? Not a technological breakthrough, right? But when you combine a small army of transcribers and you integrate it seamlessly with your cell phone AND the transcription is performed immediately and then emailed to you…that is something all together different.

Several new voicemail-to-text companies can provide this service to you. Though their original intent was to integrate voicemail transcriptions into your email program (I never miss voicemail messages this way), it can also serve as a quick transcription service for short letters. There is no forward or reverse when using these services, so it’s a quick and dirty method for dictation. But if you are looking for ultimate mobility, cost savings and speed of the transcription process, this might be for you.

Digital transcription systems can cost $500 or more, but by using one of these novel services with your phone, you can have the benefits of a digital transcription system on the cheap. It allows you to dictate from the road and email it to your staff member for final polishing and delivery. You don’t have to return to the office just to deliver a dictation tape, it will be there waiting on them when they arrive in the morning. They’ll appreciate the fact that it gets roughly transcribed automatically. Having the transcribed text converted to email is a very handy way or routing content to staff members, organizing and storing your dictation in separate Outlook folders or storing it in your case management system as a computer file.

I like these voicemail-to-text services because companies that present themselves specifically as transcription services are much more expensive. Usually $1.50+ per minute. They are more likely to have legally trained transcribers and will produce a cleaner transcription, but at a much higher cost. Plus, I like the benefit of having all of my voicemail transcribed to email. Many of these services also offer reasonably price packages for an unlimited number of voicemail-to-text transcriptions.

One Destination to Check all Communications
Being able to go to your email account to see all of your communications is also a wonderful side benefit. This is an important component of the “unified messaging” concept which includes email, voicemail and faxes all delivered to your email inbox. It unifies all forms of communications. But unified messaging is a topic for another day. Onto transcription services!

A Discrete Method for Checking Voicemail Messages
It’s a lot easier to read a voicemail then to go through all the phone prompts to get to voicemail. There are many situations where holding your phone to ear would be inappropriate (courtroom, meeting, cinema, restaurant table) but you can discreetly read your transcribed voicemail by holding the phone out of site of others and catching up on messages. Since I am already using my email program all day, there is that added convenience.

Vroom! Time to Test Drive
Try one of these companies’ free trials. Configure the account to work with your cell phone number and email account. After the setup is complete, call the phone number that you associated with your dictation\transcription service. Dictate directly to your voicemail…in a few moments you will have the dictation transcribed to text. Forward the email to your staff for polishing into a finished letter. You don’t have to wait until the next hour or next day to have the transcription, it is completed within minutes.

One of my favorite services for voicemail-to-text transcription is VoiceCloud. They include the actual voice recording as an email attachment (PhoneTab also functions this way). If there is any trouble with call quality and the service has problems transcribing your message, you can always have a staff member playback the audio recording of your message on their PC.

Many of these services cap the length of the message, so you will want to explore your options unless you want to dictate a letter in 30 second snippets (no thanks!). These other services are best suited to leaving yourself or others “text reminders” instead of any meaningful dictation.

Another System for Digital Dictation Using your Cell Phone
Many cell phones come with an audio recorder that allows you to record messages to a computer file and email them. There are also add-on programs that give many cell phones this capability or expand on your cell phone’s built-in recording abilities (Audacity Audio http://www.audacityaudio.com ).

Let’s assume you don’t want to spend the monthly fee on these phone voicemail-to-text transcription services listed above or their recording times are too short for your purposes. For a one-time investment, you can purchase the necessary equipment that would allow staff members to control the playback of audio recordings made on your cell. That way you can still electronically route a dictation computer file to your staff, have the convenience of using your cell phone to dictate, and gaining access to the more powerful recording features you have grown accustomed to when dictating (fast forward, reverse, marking). Your staff member would have the familiar transcription foot pedals and controls they are accustomed to even though the recording is an audio computer file and not a tape.

A local Ohio company, www.transcriptiongear.com sells playback software and foot pedals that give staff members all of the playback control they enjoy with the traditional cassette tape-based transcription systems. Follow this link to a complete transcription package for audio computer files.

EXTRAS

Automatic voicemail transcription services with a human behind the curtain:
www.VoiceCloud.com
www.PhoneTag.com * (formerly Simulscribe)
www.Jott.com
www.Spinvox.com
www.QuickTake.com

Software powered transcription services:
www.Nuance.com
www.Yap.com

Professional transcription services targeting the legal community:
http://www.escriptionist.com/transcription-rates/index.htm

Bulk outsourcing of audio and video transcription:
http://www.elance.com/

http://www.outsource2india.com/

*PhoneTag is restricted to 60, 90, 120 second message lengths depending on which package you purchase. All of these services have tight constraints on the length of the message that gets transcribed.

Vonage phone service offers an add-on with their home\business accounts known as Visual Voicemail. It will transcribe the first two minutes of every message into text and then you have the option of emailing it to one of 5 email addresses that you have saved.