We have two skilled and experienced transcription teams dedicated to providing professional, accurate and efficient transcription services to our customers. Over the years, we have found it most beneficial to retain an in house team for work deemed too delicate to leave our premises, whilst our stalwart remote transcribing team enables us to provide a comprehensive service second to none.

Whilst the majority of transcription today is digital, mostly audio and some video, we have retained the ability to transcribe those old fashioned analogue cassette tapes, whether they be standard cassettes, or the even smaller mini or micro tapes.

The only difference a client will experience in service is the slightly longer turnaround time, due to the tapes having to be sent via courier or signed for post.

There is no definitive answer to this. Transcription industry standards dictate that 10 to 15 minutes of speech takes one hour to transcribe and therefore a 60 minute recording should take somewhere between 4 and 6 hours to transcribe, based on a good quality recording without any hindering factors.

This depends upon a number of factors.

QUALITY OF RECORDING: Poor quality recording is often due to the recording equipment, recording volume, type of microphone and in case of analogue recorders, the brand and age of cassette used.

CLARITY OF SPEAKERS: Poor clarity of the speakers is most likely to be due to the speaker being too far away from the microphone, or by speaking too low, or too fast. If we cannot hear it, we cannot transcribe it.

RECORDING ENVIRONMENT: Background noise is another major factor of a poor quality recording. This is because the choice of recording venue has been poorly chosen. The microphone has often done its job well, picking up every single clatter, roar or background chatter, at the same time as the original speakers.

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: Some recordings involving multiple speakers take longer to transcribe due to the tendency of speakers to interrupt and overlap or by the difficulty of identifying a single speaker amongst the many.

You can view our main transcribing conventions easily via our website, either by browsing under our client tab, or for your ease, when completing our Booking Form, if you need a reminder, there are query buttons which will explain these briefly.

Our main transcribing conventions may differ from other transcription companies, and so we would ask you to ensure you do read and understand the difference between our Verbatim and Smart Verbatim conventions.

We aim to provide the transcription suited best to your own specifications. Our booking form gives you an opportunity to give us as much information as possible so that we get your transcription as you want it right from the outset.

Put simply, yes! We can time code every 10 seconds, every new speaker turn, every page or every 5 minutes - it is up to you.
However, please note that time coding any transcript will increase the time taken to transcribe, and therefore will increase the fees you will be charged. It is no trouble at all if you ask us for a quote with, or without time coding.

We are still always more than happy to endeavour the transcription of poor quality recordings if appropriate. It should be noted however from the outset of the addition time it will take to complete the transcription due to the various poor quality factors that may be involved. However, if we feel that transcribing a file is not going to beneficial to you by the amount of text we are unable to transcribe for whatever reason, we will of course advise you rather than produce a spurious document of little use to anyone.

We hope that our Quick Quote system is simple and easy to use. You can access this on any of our services pages or our home page.

It's really quite simple. If you are new to us, simply complete the quick quote by inputting a description of your transcription needs, click on the 'new enquiry' button, type your Name and Email address in the corresponding fields, and hit 'Send'.

We would hope that you will use our Quick Quote system, which will enable you to create an account and complete an online booking form, giving us the information needed to form an accurate assessment of your project requirements. Once you accept the quote, you will be sent a link to follow enabling you to upload the file(s) to us securely.

Along the side of our Quick Quote box is a login tab. Simply click on that, and you will be redirected to your login / account page.

Please feel free to view our Clients page for a brief overview of some of our clients.

These can be accessed via our Booking Form. Please note that it is a requirement that our T&Cs are accepted in order to complete and submit the Booking Form.

If it is a one off transcription that you require, depending on your circumstances we can either take payment by debit / credit card once the work is completed.

If your company / organisation is responsible for payment, we will issue an invoice for your remittance.

Believe it or not, good transcribers these days are few and far between. We have a minimum standard of education that they must meet and prove, and they undergo vigorous testing prior to joining us. Not only do we assess our staff at the beginning of their career with us, but assessment is continuous throughout their time with us,

Whilst we will always strive to help a client out in an emergency, we would ask that you contact us directly in the first instance. It may be that our current workload is heavier than usual, in which case it may be a little tricky for us, however we will always try to help.

Our standard turnaround time for a single audio file is approximately 2-3 working days. Strictly speaking this is not set in stone - if we can get the transcript back to you sooner, we will - it just really depends on the current workload of our transcribers.
If you have a large project and expect to send us 40 files all at once, then we will simply transcribe them and send the transcripts back to you as and when they are completed.

We would rather you didn't for the simple reason that your file will not be secure. Emails are not particularly suited well to large attachments, and often may not get through / past the mail gateway. It is much more secure to use a trusted and safe FTP service, such as WeTransfer!

Whilst we can prepare a transcript for you with the correct formatting suitable for use with a Qualitative Analysis program, we do not run the actual program here.