It’s a tough task to transcribe a meeting freehand for 30 minutes, let alone meetings that are 3 hours or more. Someone always talks over someone, or too quickly, or spouts a load of jargon that you can’t keep up with… Before you know it, you’ve lost track of the meeting minutes and you’re no longer involved in the conversation.
Did you know the average time to transcribe one hour of audio is approximately four hours. But, some transcribers quote four hours as the minimum since it can easily reach 10 hours.
Worried about your next meeting? Let’s cover how to transcribe a meeting in the easiest way possible. But first, what is a meeting transcription?
What is a Meeting Transcription?
Transcribing a meeting is the process of converting spoken conversations (converting video or audio to text) from a meeting into written text. It can be done manually (the tedious way) or automatically by using AI-powered software (the quick and easy way).
Modern transcription software can transcribe and record the conversation during meetings to a high degree of accuracy. Transcription is common practice in office meetings, board meetings, job interviews, and even legal proceedings.
AI-powered tools make it easier to summarize discussions, review key points, and ensure accountability! Even better, many of these transcription tools can automate your post-call workflows by automatically syncing meeting notes with your CRM system, or sending follow-up reminders based on conversational context.
Why Transcribe Meetings?
Before we dive into a step by step guide, it’s important to know the benefits of transcribing a meeting. Some people might think it’s not that necessary, but it’s vital to view transcripts through an AI lens nowadays, too.
With AI analytics, you can pull information from your team’s client-facing conversations and use it to quickly and efficiently build strategies, tactics, and adjust priorities. Effective meetings improve team performance by 25% as clear goals and actionable outcomes boost efficiency, so it’s important to get this right.
Here are four core reasons why you should transcribe your meetings:
- It creates a meeting repository.
- It makes information accessible.
- It makes meeting data searcheable.
- It helps ensuring compliance is in place.
1. It creates a meeting repository
Transcribing a meeting provides a permanent record of your discussion. This way, you’re making sure all the important parts, action points, and designated responsibilities can be followed up and easily accessed for future reference.
It allows you to quickly refer back to past discussions which enhances accountability and maintains organization. It’s also a great way to clear up any misunderstandings between team members.
2. It makes information accessible
Meeting transcription plays a crucial role in ensuring equal access to information for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Without a transcription or captions, many people may struggle to fully participate in discussions, making it difficult to follow key decisions, action items, and overall meeting context.
By having a written record, you provide a different medium for your team to approach the same information. Additionally, transcripts help users review meetings at their own pace. This is an especially helpful practice to fill team mates in who couldn’t make the meeting in real-time for one reason or another. It’s a great practice for asynchronous work teams.
3. It makes meeting data searcheable
Transcripts make it super easy for users to find key points, action items, and decisions in a meeting. With AI summaries and notes, this is taken a step further as those important bits will be highlighted and presented to you with emphasis.
However, if you’re looking for something specific in a meeting, it’s a lot easier to have a transcript with a recording as you can search by keyword or topic to find specific areas of the discussion.
4. It helps ensuring compliance is in place
The big C word can be a little daunting but stringent policies must be followed in professional settings, particularly when dealing with sensitive data. This includes legal work, health services, but also customer-facing operations.
They require up to date and accurate meeting records to ensure they are following data regulations such as GDPR. Transcripts are the answer to your compliance woes as they aid in helping you meet legal and regulatory obligations.
How to Transcribe a Meeting?
Transcribing a meeting can be long-winded, tedious, and draining, or it can be quick, easy, and efficient. It all depends on whether you transcribe the meeting manually or use an AI software to help.
Let’s take a look at how to transcribe a meeting using both methods and you can decide which one is better for you and your business (though we think we already know!).
Transcribing Manually
Manual transcription involves a human listening to a meeting and typing out what was said. This can be done in real-time during the meeting or afterward using a recording.
To transcribe a meeting this way, all you need to do is grab a pen and a piece of paper (or use your PC) and copy down the discussion word for word. It can be difficult to keep up if you’re transcribing live so don’t be afraid to use short-hand. But be warned; humans suffer from fatigue. You can’t maintain the same speed and efficiency forever. Mistakes will undoubtedly creep in, especially during longer meetings.
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of manual transcription.
Pros of Manual Transcriptions
- Higher accuracy. A person can recognize nuances like tone, accents, and overlapping speech better than AI.
- Better context awareness. Humans can summarize, correct errors, and format the text more naturally.
- Customizable formatting. Manual transcription allows for personalized structuring, such as summarizing key points or distinguishing between speakers more clearly.
Cons of Manual Transcriptions
- Time-consuming. Depending on typing speed, transcribing a one-hour meeting can take 3-4 hours. If you’re hand-writing, you might as well forget it.
- Labor-intensive. Requires a high level of focus and can be exhausting for long meetings.
- Expensive. Hiring professional transcriptionists or services can be costly.
Manual transcripts are best for small meetings with limited dialogue. If accuracy is more important than speed, it might be worth having a professional transcriptionist go over your text. Similarly, for legal, medical, or specific research fields where the details are crucial, a manual transcript might be a better move.
Relying on Automation
Automated transcription uses AI-powered tools to convert speech into text in real-time or from a recording. Many AI-driven services offer speech recognition, speaker identification, and timestamping. More advanced tools can even perform sentiment analysis and analyze the user’s tone of voice.
What’s best about automated transcripts though is that they are rapid, cost-effective, and easily searchable. You can edit them if you notice problems, add comments to the transcript, and even generate summaries and meeting notes (in specific templates). Finally, you can use these to automatically fill out your CRM or documentation tools so you don’t have to lift a finger.
To transcribe a meeting with automated tools, you simply need to join your meeting as usual and make sure your meeting recorder has joined the meeting too. It will transcribe your discussion automatically in the background so that you can focus fully on the conversation.
Pros of Automated Transcription
- Fast and efficient. Transcripts are generated in minutes rather than hours. There’s also no AI sloppiness as it doesn’t get tired, meaning you can produce transcripts at scale.
- Cost-effective. Many AI tools offer free or low-cost plans compared to hiring a human transcriptionist.
- Searchable & editable. AI-generated text can be easily searched, making it useful for documentation and review.
Cons of Automated Transcription
- Accuracy varies. AI can struggle with accents, background noise, and multiple speakers talking over each other. It may also miss key terminology, acronyms, or industry-specific jargon without being pre-programmed to acknowledge them.
- Speaker identification issues. Some tools misattribute speech, requiring manual corrections.
- Privacy concerns. Storing audio and transcripts on cloud-based services may pose security risks, especially for sensitive meetings.
Automated transcripts are best for large meetings with multiple speakers where speed is a priority. Businesses that need quick documentation but don’t require 100% accuracy will find AI tools extremely helpful. They’re also good for routine team meetings, webinars, and brainstorming sessions.
Using tl;dv Transcribe Your Meetings
tl;dv is a popular AI meeting assistant that can record, transcribe, and summarize your meetings for free. It works by joining your meetings via popular video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and MS Teams.
One of the great things about tl;dv is the ability to create custom meeting note templates. Essentially, you can instruct tl;dv’s AI on how you’d like to see your notes formatted and structured. This allows you to create effective meeting notes, regardless of the situation.
There are a number of templates that you can use, including popular sales playbooks like BANT, SPIN, and MEDDIC. There are also templates for HR, product, user research, customer success, and other departments. These templates can all be customized, and you can even create your own from scratch.
Even better, sync these meeting notes automatically with your CRM to avoid manually filling it after every customer-facing call. It saves human reps and agents ridiculous amounts of time that could be better spent securing the next deal.
If you’re looking to transcribe a meeting to keep track of your sales calls, tl;dv is a fantastic tool to help you. It has a speaker analytics dashboard so you can monitor your sales team performance and check that they’re accurately following your sales scripts.
As a sales manager, you can also generate recurring reports to receive regular updates that cover desired topics over a number of calls at once. For example, you can receive a weekly report that covers all your sales reps’ calls that contain objections relating to price. You set the frequency. You set the topic. tl;dv synthesizes your team’s calls and provides a detailed report complete with timestamps so you can skip to the important bits.
It’s also worth mentioning that tl;dv can transcribe in over 40 languages, even a different one to the one spoken during the call. This is great if you want to translate your Google Meet recordings.
Best Practices for Meeting Transcription
A well-structured meeting transcription is clear, accurate, and easy to navigate. Whether you’re transcribing manually or using an AI-powered tool, following these best practices ensures that your transcripts are useful and professional.
Ensure Clarity and Completeness
A transcript has to capture the entire meeting discussion while remaining easy to understand. If you’re manually transcribing your calls, make sure you’re recording them so you can go back over difficult sections to ensure accuracy.
Make certain that each speaker is identified correctly. Automated transcription tools should do this on your behalf, but always double check as sometimes they make mistakes.
If possible, remove filler words to increase clarity. You don’t need to add every “um” and “uh” into the transcript. Some automated transcript tools get rid of filler words automatically.
Proofreading and Editing for Accuracy
Even with AI-generated transcripts, errors can occur due to accents, background noise, or overlapping speech. To ensure your transcripts are accurate, go through and correct any errors.
Check for missing words, gaps, or misheard phrases. If there are any punctuation or grammar errors, now is the time to clean them up. Finally, ensure that technical acronyms are transcribed correctly. AI tools in particular may encounter problems transcribing acronyms.
Formatting Transcripts for Readability
At the end of the day, transcripts are there to be read. You want to make them neat and easy to scan so that your colleagues can make the most of them.
Use speaker labels clearly and put them in bold so the transcript is easy to follow. If someone spoke for a long period of time, break up their text. Long paragraphs are difficult to scan.
If necessary, add timestamps for key information. To make things even more clear, you could even break the transcript up with headers that divide the discussion into its relevant parts. An AI transcription tool should format transcripts for readability on their own, but it never hurts to check.
Three Things to Consider
To get the most accurate and highest quality transcriptions, there are a few basic things to consider. Ensure the following points are followed and you shouldn’t have any issues:
- Accuracy. Make sure the tool you’re using to transcribe can pick up any jargon your team frequently uses. If it has a custom vocabulary feature, even better! This will allow you to program the AI with new words, including any that it didn’t previously recognize.
- Speaker Identification. It’s important when transcribing a recorded meeting to label all the speakers individually. This gives a source to where the information came from and improves the overall readability of the transcript. Automated transcription tools like tl;dv will assist however it’s important to make manual corrections if you know the speaker identification is wrong.
- Privacy Concerns. Last but by no means least is our old friend GDPR. You have to, when recording or transcribing any meeting, get consent from any and all participants. At the end of the day, you’re storing important and sensitive information. Without consent, you and your company could get into trouble for making recordings.
FAQs
We’ve gathered some of the most frequently asked questions about how to transcribe a meeting here so that you can get answers all in one place. Employees spend 392 hours per year in meetings, so it’s only natural that questions will arise regarding transcriptions. Bookmark this page and come back when you need some quick answers.
1. How Long Does a Transcription Take?
Depending on the tool, an AI-assisted transcription can be completed as the meeting is going on or within minutes following the end of the call. However, if it was a complex discussion, you may need to edit the transcript.
A manual transcription generally is a long winded process. It can take 4-6 hours just to transcribe a 1 hour meeting.
2. How Do Automated Transcription Tools Work?
Automated transcription tools use AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to convert spoken language into text. These tools typically break down the audio into phonetic components to identify words. By analyzing the grammar and syntax, the AI can understand context and even identify different speakers.
The AI tool will format and punctuate the transcript for easy readability and it’ll refine the transcript after the call to extract notes, summaries, and highlights.
3. How Accurate are AI-Generated Transcripts?
The accuracy of AI-powered transcripts depends on several factors:
- Audio Quality. Clear recordings with minimal background noise produce more accurate results.
- Speaker Clarity. Clear and well-paced speech improves transcription quality. If you’re mumbling or talking too fast, the AI may not transcribe as accurately.
- Technical Jargon. Unless there’s a custom vocabulary feature, the AI may struggle with technical jargon.
- Accents. Depending on the AI software, regional accents may have an effect on how accurate the transcript is.
- AI Model Sophistication. A lot of AI tools on the market can achieve somewhere in the range of 85-90% accuracy, but you’ll almost always have to go through to correct minor errors.
For legal, medical, or corporate use, it’s best to review and edit AI-generated transcripts for 100% precision.
4. Can Meeting Transcriptions Be Edited for Errors?
Yes! Most transcription tools allow manual editing to correct any inaccuracies. You can usually compare sections of the audio with the corresponding part of the transcript to edit anything the AI got wrong. It’s also a good idea to verify speaker labels and fix any grammar or punctuation errors.
5. Which Industries Benefit Most from Meeting Transcription?
Meeting transcription is valuable across multiple industries, improving documentation, accessibility, and productivity. Here are a few of those that find it most beneficial:
- Business and Corporate. Transcripts help companies track decisions, create summaries, and ensure compliance with industry regulations. They’re also great for customer-facing calls by sales and CS.
- Legal. Attorneys use transcriptions for depositions, court hearings, and client meetings to maintain accurate legal records.
- Healthcare. Doctors and medical professionals rely on transcriptions for patient records, consultations, and compliance with HIPAA.
- Education & Research. Professors, researchers, and students use transcription for lectures, interviews, and qualitative research.
Start Transcribing Your Meetings Today
Meeting transcription is more than just a convenience — it’s a powerful tool that enhances productivity, accessibility, and documentation. While manual transcriptions tend to be more accurate, they take a lot longer and waste man-power that could be better used elsewhere. Only use manual transcriptions if accuracy is absolutely essential.
AI-generated transcripts, on the other hand, provide lightning fast transcripts with high levels of accuracy, speaker identification, as well as summaries, notes, and highlights.
Whichever method you choose to transcribe a meeting, it’s always important to have a written record to ensure key insights, decisions, and action items are never lost. By following the best practices outlined here, you can make your transcripts clear, accurate, and super easy for your teammates to read.
So what are you waiting for? tl;dv offers unlimited call recordings, transcriptions, and summaries for free!
