Dear Interviewer. Part two in a transcriptionist’s quest to better serve you…

I believe a transcriptionist is a journalist’s/writer’s/physician’s/educator’s/student’s best friend.  We are able to transcribe your audio and provide you with quality documents, and in doing so, save you time and money.

Thee are some tips that you can keep in mind, as someone who has the need for audio transcription, that can make it easier for the transcriptionist to provide better service to you.  Some have been mentioned here in a previous post – http://wp.me/pLEiA-6B

Here are a few more that some of my team would like to share.  These tips, I am sure, are echoed throughout the transcription community.

There are a lot of times that researching things like, spelling of people’s names, cities, special drugs like cancer research drugs, technology terms, sometimes even acronyms can be tricky.

What is interesting is some people will go out of their way to say a word, and then spell a word like Apple Sauce, but names like Anna Koolakokaloma are just said, usually real fast and not spelt – except graciously they will say Anna with two ‘n’s.

If the audio is not the best, or the person speaking is difficult to understand due to background noise, cell phones being used, ESL, etcetera, it can take even longer for the research to be done and we all know “time is money,” both to the client and the transcriptionist.

So, please help us produce the most efficient, accurate, and professional report for you by providing as much information as you can regarding the interview or project being transcribed, even a website that we can reference for information can sometimes be helpful.

We pride ourselves with our research skills, but there are times that having that information beforehand can save us both time and money.

If there is more than one speaker being interviewed, having them say their names when they start talking is so helpful.  You’d be amazed at how most people sound alike on a recording.

Chances are if the person you are interviewing is sitting across the room and you are sitting with the recorder it will be impossible to hear them.  Move it by them or have them speak louder.  Consider sitting still if you are using speakerphone with the recorder sitting next to it.  When using speakerphone, noise on your end cuts out what the person being interviewed is saying.  So instead of hearing them, I’m hearing the papers being moved, you walking around, etcetera.  I even had one where the interviewer was taking notes with paper and pencil and the writing was louder than the person.

Naming your audio file is one thing that can help you in the future.  I have had clients send files that are automatically named by the device they are using to record and save the audio.  When they send the file to me, I will usually put the interviewee’s name in the file name going back to the client, but if unknown, we simply use the audio file name as a report name – so the client can match up report to audio file.  Occasionally a client will ask me ‘do you have the interview I did for John Smith?’  Unfortunately they do not supply names of interviewees and do not name the file in such a way that it is easily searchable.  (Probably why they are asking me if I have it).  So, it is important to name your file with something that is pertinent to you – or to give me the information so I can name the report accordingly.  This absolutely saves the client time when they are searching for their audio and their work in the future.

Of course there are times that difficult files or the arena of the interview cannot be controlled.  CLK Transcription prides themselves in being able to handle even the most difficult of files.   There is no extra charge for difficult files, for multiple speakers.  We consider them just regular routine work for us because we deal with so many great journalists.  

We understand that the profession you are in is demanding, and we work hard to meet your needs.  Contact us today to find out how we might save you time and money – even with the most difficult of audios.  www.clktranscription.com

E-mails can be overwhelming, but they don’t always have to be.

Okay. Fun with emails is fun with emails, and we all joke about the spam – you know the Viagra, the “send me money and I send you millions’, etc – but lots of times they get us all a bit crazy, or if we are lucky, the e-mails giving us work information and contacts overwhelm us but are welcomed.

In my business, email is 90 percent of the communication I have with clients and potential clients, and organizing my email is important as a backup of sorts of their important information.

Accordingly, I have mastered a method where I never have more than 25 emails at one time, and it never takes me more than ten minutes four times a day to keep up with the nonessential, non urgent, family oriented, friendly “non-spam spam’.

I do check my e-mail throughout the day, all day, every day for my professional, business email.  I have to. I have clients who send me work constantly and consistently all day every day, and they all need immediate attention, whether I find the subject important or not.  Every email I receive is usually responded to within 15 minute without interrupting or interfering with my day-to-day business chores.  Because, to me, email is a day-to-day business chore.

Have you ever checked your email at night and seen that “can you do this by end of day’ and missed the opportunity for a business project or professional connection?

The method I have developed for myself has helped others I have worked with in the past keep up with their professional and personal email and  still get “everyday’ work done on time and professionally.

I chuckle sometimes when I hear people say they have hundreds of emails to sort through when they wake up or even worse, when they are trying to wind down for the evening. They find themselves up for hours sorting and responding to the email making their day longer than it should be.

It wasn’t easy for me to figure it all out, but now I go to bed with an empty email box and wake up and within 20 minutes of opening email, my in-box is empty, every email responded to, sorted, saved or deleted. And my deleted items is empty and most often, my sent folder is empty.

It drives me crazy when others ask me to sort and organize their email and everything they have ever done is sitting in sent or deleted items folders.

How do you ever find anything?

Yes, I get about 500 emails a day to just one email address and I have 7 I use daily for both personal and professional business. No, I do not just delete them, I read every one and sort accordingly.

It is not that difficult.  It does take some discipline and some great organizational skills that for some must be learned – the same skills we use every day to organize the other aspects of our life.  I give email the same ‘respect’ I give my clients work, and in the end, it respects me back.

I call it ADHD OCD email procedures. 

I think of it as being like an exercise. You have to want to really commit, but once the routine is established, it is just that routine. And when you think about it, your email is just as important as your weight, your health, your clients, and your projects. So why treat it as a secondhand, unwanted, terrible thing?

Of course it can be a headache, more like a migraine, if you let it go and put it off, or don’t use the email programs in the best way possible.  No one ever teaches us how to do anything but set up to receive, read and delete.  That is what the problem is.  We began using this great tool thinking it is just a means of receiving/sending electronically what we would have mailed by way of snail mail.

It is so much more than that. It is a social networking tool that allows us that in, that even the best social networks sometimes cannot give – but they do allow you to inform others of your email address.  So what would they be without email?

And think about this…the better you are with handling your email, the more likely your email will be read and handled quicker by others when they receive it. 

It’s all in the organization.

I have organized many client’s email and once organized they have stated it is easy to keep up. When they slip up due to vacation or other personal or professional dramas, they call me in and I clean it up again. I don’t even have to be involved in they day-to-day operations of the business to know how to do it, the clients just have to know their day-to-day business – how easy is that?

I consider e-mail an important part of any business.

It is the first social network ever developed. It is also the first electronic filing system, in my opinion, and a great backup system to some pretty important information.

If you don’t keep it organized, you can and will miss something.

I am working on putting my personal system down step by step.  It is a bit hard for me to do because every person’s email is in need of personalized organization, and well, as you can tell by the name of my blog, I have kind of random thoughts and not as great a writer as many of my clients, but as a self-proclaimed organizational freak, I will get it done and be sure to post.

If you are interested in having a bit of electronic organization done – or your office organized specifically for you – let me know. I enjoy a challenge that at the end of the task, you see a difference not just in the space but on the face of the client.

How do you handle your email?

www.clktranscription.com

Did you wash your hands? Did the person before you? Mysophobia anyone?

I cannot tell you how agitated I get when I witness some habits of people and their ability to affect (infect) my life.

 

No, I am not a compulsive, mysophobic, although there are times I wonder what is so wrong with practicing a little mysophobia anyway.  Maybe those with the disorder are on to something.

 

Ever ride a bus or subway, or any vehicle used for mass transit?  Ever sit and watch the people, sneeze into their hands, eat, cough, and pick at things and then grab the handrail or door handle and you say to yourself “gee, what a pig?”  Ever not see it and think you are safe and never really think about the people on that same ride BEFORE you.  Notice how many supermarkets have the sanitizing wipes by the carts now?  I read somewhere that 78 percent of shopping carts have fecal matter detected on them.  What you can’t see sometimes can infect you.

 

Today, I had the displeasure of having one of my all time pet peeves witnessed.  I was in a public restroom at a McDonalds.  It was clean enough.  After doing my business, I washed my hands.  I lathered, I scrubbed, I cleaned.  Then I went looking for a hand towel.  None.  They had these blowers to dry my hands.  Okay.  I can push on it with my elbow.  I can stand there for another minute or two, and viola, clean dry hands. 

Just then, it happened.  Two young girls and their mother came out of the other stall.  Mom with a baby in one hand and a diaper in the other.  They opened the bathroom door and left.  Each grabbing the handle.

 

Now even though my hands are clean and dry, I don’t know what I am touching there – I feel trapped in the bathroom. 

 

I remember when the paper towel was there.  We were taught to grab a towel, turn on the water, wash, turn off the water using the towel, and using the same towel, open the door and toss the towel on the way out. 

 

Now, no matter how much we practice safe and clean habits, we have to wonder about the habits of others. All in the name of saving the neatness of the bathroom?  I would much rather walk into a bathroom with hand towels on the floor next to the exit, than to wonder who touched the door before me on the way out. 

 

Maybe the sink should be on the outside of the bathrooms. 

 

I am just saying…

 

 

WWW.CLKTranscription.com

Random thought of the day: Some words are overused. Here are some of my pet peeves.

I have watched and listened to many people over the last few days that has led me to form the opinion that certain words are overused, and used with no sincerity or knowledge of meaning behind them.

Innocent:  People use this word to describe others or their own actions.  If an action is questionable, which is the only reason someone would have to use ‘innocent’ to describe it, it is hardly innocent.  It may be harmless, asinine, thoughtless, or sometimes even more sinister – but hardly innocent.

Juvenile:  I am sorry but when someone over the age of 18 does something incredibly stupid, it is just that – incredibly stupid.  Many juveniles don’t act that way until they see adults being stupid.  let’s stop using a term to describe adolescents to describe adults behaving badly.

Handicapped:  Just because an individual has alternative ways of capably accomplishing something does not make them handicapped.   However, there are some who may be considered juvenile (see above) that are just incredibly stupid, which in my mind, makes them more handicapped than some who must use alternative ways to achieve a means to and end.

Difficult:  All things are difficult until you learn them.  We learned to sit, eat, walk and talk – we can learn just about anything.  It is the wanting to learn and do the best we can that is difficult.  Everything else is just work.

Income: I keep hearing this word, but have not seen an ‘income’ without the ‘outgo’ that goes with it, starting with a large percentage of my ‘income’ outgoing to the IRS.  We should probably call it, residuals.

Insurance:  Now here is a word that throws me.  It should really be called ‘assurance’, because if you don’t have it you are assured to feel screwed (especially with the new laws) when you need it, and if you have it, you can be assured that you will be more stressed than you were before you needed it for health, home, or vehicle reasons.  I believe big Pharma loves this mechanism that happens to keep our blood pressure raised and minds confused because it allows them more government funding for research.  Funding of course that comes out of our ‘residuals’ (see above).

Respect:  Some people say they deserve this, but have never earned it.  This is, in my mind, one right you are not born with.  Sometimes you can earn it quickly, but most times it takes work and if you have it, you should never get comfortable with it, because if you act juvenile (see above) you can lose it faster than you got it.  I also believe you must have it yourself ,for yourself before someone else can share theirs with you.

Employment:  I can’t tell you how many times I personally have heard people say they want a job, but then don’t ‘show up’ to do the job.  By showing up, I do mean physically and mentally showing up.  I have also personally heard people, even in this economy, say things like ‘that’s not my job’.  I believe, that if you want to work and you receive a paycheck for legitimate tasks, and you happen not to appreciate the tasks assigned to you, you have three basic choices.  Everyone does.  One – do it with a smile.  Two – do it and ask for a raise.  Three – move on and allow someone who appreciates the opportunity to earn a paycheck to earn it.  Sitting at your job, not doing your job, hurts everyone.  Not just you and your employer, not their clients, but also the person who could be there, earning a wage and taking responsibility for their lives.  So it is not employment, but work.  Employment is using your abilities to get the task done in your job, which you do get a paycheck to do.

Love:  This word most of all is over used.  People, especially the young, use the phrase ‘I Love You’ so easily and freely, they lose the whole idea behind the words.

I believe that when you love someone those words should come from the heart and from the knowing.    It comes from wanting to be with that person, caring for that person, being there in times of need for that person, and them there for you, yet being able to be apart without a suspicious thought rolling around your head when you are.  Loving someone for who they are, beyond that ‘honeymoon’ stage that young couples have.

An extension of  overuse of ‘I love you” is  ‘I want to share my life with you‘.  When in that honeymoon stage of ‘love”, people do not share lives, they share time.  They forget, or do not know, or do not realize that sharing a life together means sharing the work, the play, the bills, the responsibilities, the friends, and even the time alone, apart from each other.  When you can do that and still lose your breath when thinking about the other person, that is love.

 

I do believe that when you love someone, truly love someone, those words should come freely.  It should never be something that you can hold back.  It should just overwhelm you to where the words come out, at the most peculiar times.  I believe that if you love someone, it is the first thing you want to say in the morning and the last thing you say at night – just because, if you lose the next moment to say it, you are fully aware that they knew exactly how you felt.  But it should not be something that is given to every person you know so easily.  It takes away from the meaning.

 

These are just a few of my pet peeves of overused / misused words.  Do you have any?  Who knows, maybe others share them with you.  I would love to hear them.

 

www.clktranscription.com

 

 

 

 

When you consider a transcription company to handle you audio files, consider CLK Transcription. So many others have.

CLK Transcription is a US based and operated transcription company.

We do not use speech recognition. We feel nothing beats the human ear when listening to your audio.

We do not offshore your work, but we do service the world and enjoy the ESL speakers as well.

CLK Transcription has transcribed audio on topics from:

Asia to Zimbabwe, ailments to cures, accounting to banking to foreclosure, citrix to cloud computing to firewalls, family to friends, medicine to holistic remedies, roller-coasters and amusement parks to babysitting and working from home, and so much more.

Including medical office notes, op notes, H&P, and lab notes for all medical specialties.

Educational clients to include doctorate interviews to IEP’s to class lectures.

We even transcribe your voice mail, convert audio, convert PDF and white paper, and so much more.

We have clients that are businesses, radio bloggers, bloggers, authors, editors, journalists, magazines, publishers, doctors, lawyers, parents, teachers, and students.

We offer every client a confidentiality agreement.

Find out why we come highly recommended. www.clktranscription.com

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