Reprinted with permission – Lyn Prowse-Bishop of www.execstress.com

One of the most frequent enquiries I receive in my practice is for transcription services – digital, microtape, standard tape – not just from potential clients but from new VAs wanting to ‘get in on’ what seems to be a burgeoning niche in the Virtual Assistant industry. So, here are a few tips and facts to help clients understand the costs of providing transcription services, and ‘newbies’ who want to add this service to their practice.

A: Not all transcriptionists are alike

There are varying typing speeds, varying levels of expertise – both with WP software and with PC-based player software – and as a result, varying charge out rates. If you are a client looking for transcription services who cares about the resulting product without having to do too much post-transcription checking, you need to find a professional service. The skills of a transcriptionist vary from a typist. According to the Industry Production Standards (IPS) Guide:

“Tape transcription is a specialised service, very different from general text keyboarding [which] relies on visual processing and can be measured as words or characters per minute; then corrected for accuracy. Transcriptionists however, must rely on aural processing, and the rhythm of the work depends on the person doing the original recording. The keyboarding portion of the tape transcription process includes a certain amount of editing ‘on the fly’ by the transcriptionist – ie paragraphing, insertion of punctuation, capitalisation, correction of grammar (in non-verbatim transcripts) and sometimes aural identification of speakers”.

So what should you look for when assessing candidates?

1. Someone with at least 2-3 years of business, office or secretarial experience;
2. Keyboarding speed of around 70 words per minute (wpm);
3. Good language/grammar skills;
4. The software skills to handle the project;

PLUS:

5. Someone with a minimum of 2-3 years basic transcription experience;
6. Mastery of advanced language skills, including grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure;
7. Exceptional level of accuracy;
8. Excellent independent judgment and decision making skills;
9. Superior on-screen proofreading and editing abilities;
10. Ability to recognise errors and inconsistencies in dictated material while transcribing;
11. Proficiency in clarification of dictation without altering meaning or style;
12. Hearing acuity and language discrimination skills, including familiarity with and understanding of accents and dialects, and recognition of voice inflections within a document.

What?! I hear you say. Indeed, these are the identified requirements of a professional transcriptionist. If you do not partner with an operator with this skill set then you can be assured that not only will transcription time be longer, but your post-transcription proofing and editing of the document will defeat the purpose of outsourcing the job in the first place.

B: Transcription Time Determinants

Understand that transcription time is determined by the quality of the audio – any noise, accents, multiple speakers, poor tape quality, or poorly positioned recording device, will increase transcription time. If you have an hour of audio it is NOT going to take an hour to transcribe – even for someone with a typing speed of 120wpm. Conversational English is in the vicinity of 200 to 250wpm – add to that relistening to identify speakers in multiple-speaker audios or any undue background noise and things start to slow down.

The IPS place transcription time for a straightforward, single person, clear audio file (think, dictating a letter) (Class 1) at 1:3-5 – ie for very minute of recorded audio it will take approximately 3-5 minutes to transcribe. This means an hour of audio will take approximately 3-5 hours to transcribe. The range covers things like complexity of the recording, whether it contains jargon or technical language, if the speaker has an accent, and whether there is any looking up of addresses, internet searching and so on. This range goes up to 4.8 to 8 hours for a Class 5 file.

Clients can decrease the amount of the final invoice by ensuring that their audio files are recorded in the best possible circumstances: better quality = less time to transcribe.

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Net Secretary is almost ready to offer web hosting and domain name registration at competitive prices. We are currently in the process of changing over our server and this should take another week or two before everything is live and operational. I’ll be sending out an email broadcast when its all finalised.

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Yesterday and today, I have been busy packing up my main street office in readiness to move it back into my home. I am moving to a new home in a few weeks time which has an ideal outside room which is going to be converted into office space for Net Secretary and I am very excited about that. Having premises has been good for me and Net Secretary and a welcome learning experience for me – but I don’t require it to do what I do best. Most of my clients are virtual anyway and I’ll be saving on overheads, as well as regaining some of the flexibility I have lost in having an off-site office. I think it will allow me to concentrate better on my new business model also, that of Online Business Manager, and in the end provide better service to my existing clients.   I have gone full circle – virtual business to bricks and mortar business back to virtual business – and I like that.

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Facebook | Erin Blaskie’s Notes

Today I purchased this book – Becoming an Online Business Manager – as recommended in Erin Blaskie’s Facebook blog. It was a timely purchase as I’ve already been thinking about the direction I want to take my business in next year. An Online Business Manager actually aligns with the thoughts I have for Net Secretary and its future direction so I am eagerly looking forward to receiving this book and absorbing the information within. Net Secretary has transitioned from a Virtual Assistant business to more of an online management business, where VAs are provided for clients to help manage their business and myself as the Online Business Manager overseeing the performance of the tasks. I am very excited about this new phase in my business and I look forward to sharing more of my discoveries.

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Bookkeeping services were not something that Net Secretary offered previously, although a lot of virtual assistants do. I had previously not had formal training in bookkeeping and to be frank, it’s not really an area I was greatly interested in, having disliked Accounting at high school. However, times do change and the first inkling of change was getting my own books into a different bookkeeping system, having out grown the Tax Office’s E-record. Also, a local client approached me to do his books in Quickbooks, among other secretarial services for him. So that is the programme I have chosen to go with.

I am currently completing a bookkeeping course so that I have the basic knowledge behind it all. The Quickbooks programme itself is easy to pick up.

So there you have it, another virtual assistant service added to Net Secretary’s already wide range of services.

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I recently had to spend a few days in hospital with a serious infection. As a normally healthy person, this was a complete shock to me. The onset of the illness was quite sudden and I was very unprepared for managing my business during this incapacitation. This experience has taught me that one’s health is so very important but also the importance of having contingency plans in place for one’s business. Luckily, I was able to enlist the assistance of my cousin to email my clients and let them know what had happened and that I would be out of action for a week or so. My photographic memory enabled me to remember most of the email addresses off the top of my head and a little research by my cousin found the ones I could not remember. For the most part this worked quite well, but it also was a timely reminder that I need to finish putting together my business manual so that this information can be easily accessed in my absence. Good planning can avoid this type of stress during an illness or while on vacation, times when one needs to be relaxing and not thinking about the business.

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Recently a client asked Net Secretary to undertake the compilation of a database. This entailed telephoning a number (100+) of government and hospitality contacts gleaned from the internet and asking for permission to place their HR manager on the mailing list to receive emailed information about a seminar the client is providing. For the most part, I would say 90% of respondents agreed to be placed on the list and were therefore emailed the information.

In effect, I believed this was cold calling and therefore fell under the auspices of telemarketing. After an exhausting few days fulfilling this request, I advised the client that we could no longer provide the service as VA’s are not sales people or telemarketers and we did not have expertise in this area. I felt strongly that we didn’t want to waste the clients time or money, given that none of my other VA contacts were willing to undertake this work in a subcontract capacity (the original subcontractor was called away on urgent family matters). They all pointed out that it was telemarketing and not within their scope of services.

I have no such issue with calling a client’s customer and confirming an appointment for the day or following up on outstanding work, unpaid invoice or whatever. However, I believe that Virtual Assistants should concentrate on what they do best and that is providing administration support. To me, asking a VA to undertake telemarketing is like asking an accountant to give legal advice. They may have some knowledge of the matter but they are by no means an expert and are likely to give misleading or just totally incorrect advice, therefore wasting the client’s time and money when it could be better spent on an expert in that field to give them results they want and deserve.

I would be interested to hear any other opinions or thoughts.

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I have been both impressed and frustrated this week with my new VOIP phone and broadband telephony service. I specifically bought the phone and phone service so that I could receive calls for clients with relative simplicity and without the prohibitive expense of installing additional landlines. For the most part, things are working well. I can make calls out, receive calls in and the sound quality is excellent. BUT … my voice mail for the phone line is not working. I can access it via my landline but it won’t accept my password. My VOIP line can’t access it at all. I have logged a service call with my VOIP telephony service provider but they are taking an interminably long time to respond. There is some urgency to this as I’ll be receiving a clients calls beginning this week and I would like the voicemail to capture any that come through when the office is unattended. Technology is awesome when it is working as it should but when there are hiccups, it can be a nightmare in frustration. Here’s hoping I get a speedy resolution to this small but significant problem asap.

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After a lengthy and valuable session with my business coach this morning, I have a long list of things I need to organise for Net Secretary. ‘Organise’ is the key word here. Implementing systems and procedures in a business is a crucial tool for increased productivity and streamlining business processes. Systems allow all of that information that you store in your head to be put into some sembalnce of order and method on paper – into a type of manual for your business – and this has many benefits for small business, both virtual and shopfront. These benefits may include:

• Enables you to see where the business is at and where it is going, it gives you focus
• Becomes part of your risk management strategy
• Provides a tool to review current processes and discard those that are not working for you
• More efficient use of your time - you know when, where, how to do something and are not as likely to forget to do something
• Makes it easier for someone to caretake your business if you are ill or away.
• Makes it simpler for new staff coming on board to learn about the processes in your business together with its vision, values and mission
• Allows a process of review to take place – a constant evolution of the systems to maintain best practice and incorporate feedback from clients and customers about things that may not be working or could be improved
• Facilitates benchmarking

 If you are new to implementing systems that work, start off with baby steps. Simply diarising or marking on your calendar the regular things you do in your business (bookkeeping, updating your marketing materials, computer back-ups etc) is a good start. From there, you can start to detail the actual process step by step. Eventually you may want to have a manual for your business in A-Z format which details a policy or procedure for each aspect of your business.

 I firmly believe in the saying “With systems I am safe” – now I just have to live it myself by implementing some systems in Net Secretary!

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We’ve had some interesting discussions in the VA network I belong to about client expectations of VA’s and the notion that some clients are not fully aware of how best to ultilise a VA. Some clients think they need someone local who can come to them and that they can actually ‘meet’ face to face. Although I am personally not adverse to going onsite and doing work for clients from time to time, the fact is most tasks can be done virtually. But how does this get around the lack of personal contact present in traditional business relationships? I have clients around the world and around Australia, some of who I will probably never meet. However, I have spoken on the telephone to a few and kept in regular touch by email with the majority, even trading photos with my New York client to bridge that gap. I also make sure there is a photo on my website and in my newsletters to try to overcome the impersonal nature of the electronic medium. I’m interested to hear what others have to say about educating clients, working virtually and how to overcome the trust/personal contact issues, both from a VA and customer perspective.

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