Secretarial Service - Providing Transcription

Transcription is one of the most profitable services you can provide in your secretarial service. You can provide business transcription, general transcription, legal transcription, and medical transcription.

Provide these guidelines to your transcription clients to get quality transcription work, avoid time delays and mistakes, and reduce transcribing fees.

1. Use a good quality microphone. Position the microphone near all speakers.

2. Check the batteries in the dictation equipment.

3. Use tapes designed for voice dictation. They filter out background noise. Demagnetize and clean tapes regularly.

4. Erase the tape before dictation and indicate the end of the transcription to avoid transcribing old materials.

5. Rewind the tape to the beginning of the dictation.

6. Dictate in a quiet environment. Turn off the TV and radio. Distance the microphone from air conditioners and fans. Avoid noise, music, and acoustics in restaurants, outdoors, and airplanes.

7. Speak clearly. Instruct people not to talk simultaneously. Identify all speakers.

8. Don't eat or drink when dictating.

9. Discuss the purpose of the transcription and style preferences with the transcriptionist. Do you want a verbatim transcript for legal purposes? Do you want to include sounds like uh, um, hmmm? Do you want to indicate laughter and long pauses?

10. Avoid delays and costly revisions by spelling unusual words and words with questionable spelling, i.e. Kathryn, Katherine, Catherine, or Caterine. Provide supporting documents and words the transcriptionist may not be familiar with such as technical terms, names, streets, and cities.

Instruct your transcription clients to provide you with a high quality recording to get an accurate transcript at the lowest possible price.

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Recommended Medical Transcription Resources

Michelle has helped many people start their own medical transcription business. She can help you too. The Step-by-Step Guide To

Medical Transcription at Home. Click here for details.