How to Transcribe a Phone Call: A Handy Guide
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Call center agents are often flooded with thousands of customer phone calls every day.
With so many incoming calls and different customer queries, trying to analyze every phone conversation right after it’s taken place can be a daunting task.
This is especially true when you consider the sheer amount of calls agents handle.
And this is where call transcription shines.
But how do you transcribe a phone call?
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how to transcribe a phone call and the legal aspects thereof. We’ll also cover the benefits of transcribing calls.
This Article Contains
Click on one of these links to jump to a specific section:
- How to Transcribe a Phone Call
- The Legalities of Recording and Transcribing a Phone Call
- 6 Key Benefits of Transcribing a Phone Call
- 2 FAQs About How to Transcribe Phone Calls
How to Transcribe a Phone Call
The easiest way to transcribe phone calls is by using a transcription service like iovox Insights.
Insights is the ideal conversational intelligence and speech analytics solution that allows you to record calls and transcribe those conversations in real-time to extract business insights and observe trends.
Let’s see what iovox Insights can do for you with its highly efficient automatic transcription abilities:
Turn Conversations into Searchable Text
Iovox Insights allows you to transcribe phone calls and enjoy the convenience of searching for conversations as easily as you do emails or texts.
All you need to do is search for a keyword in a conversation from the past, and iovox will find the call transcript you need.
Keep your CRM Up-to-date
Keep details of every sales call by transcribing recorded calls into text and use iovox to share the details with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Create a Massive Data Source of Everything Ever Said
Call transcription offers you access to a rich repository of everything said over a phone call.
This means you can analyze transcripts to understand:
- What brings in more revenue
- What influences customer decisions
- If the agent scripts are making an impact
- If agents stick to decided scripts or not
- And more
But that isn’t all that Insights can do for you:
Other Impactful iovox Insights Features
iovox Insights is a market leader when it comes to making the most out of conversational data.
Here are some things iovox Insights can do:
Measure Performance Metrics to Boost Customer Experience
With iovox Insights, you can detect trends and foresee possible business outcomes based on historical customer interactions.
This can help improve call interactions and increase the overall customer service experience.
The data is viewable on the iovox Dashboard and provides insights into:
- Total call time
- The average number of phone calls per day
- Noting preferred keywords in a customer phone call transcription
- Call outcomes
- Top keyword rules
- The call’s date and time
- The caller type
Want to know the best part?
The artificial intelligence offered by the iovox transcription software is trainable!
By exposing the AI to increased volumes of customer interactions, iovox Insights becomes a consistently evolving automation tool that stays aligned with your organization’s needs.
Here are a few other valuable iovox features:
- The iovox app lets you monitor a conversation by adding tags and notes where necessary.
- You can replay any recorded and transcribed conversation from your dashboard.
- You can add call insights to your analytics dashboard and reporting via integration with the iovox API. It’s compatible with tools like Google Analytics, Ads, Zoho CRM, and Tag Manager.
Track Calls with Keywords
Want to ensure specific keywords are automatically detected from a call transcript?
With iovox Insights’ keyword detection and speech recognition features, you can.
Monitoring keywords assists with:
- Boosting customer retention rates by inspecting previous interactions and cases.
- Improving overall customer experience
- Detecting trends and business outcomes
- Impacting customer decisions
- Influencing sales
- Forging trusting relationships with customers through transparency
- Tracking how employees handle incoming calls and interactions
- Understanding inbound leads
- Knowing the quality of inbound/outbound leads
On top of that, you can add elevated criteria for keyword spotting, like a filter or trigger that will notify the correct people in your organization of the insights gathered.
But here's an important question to ask when talking about transcribing calls:
Is call transcription legal?
The Legalities of Recording and Transcribing a Phone Call
Transcription and recording laws differ from state to state and country to country.
Rules about recording phone calls broadly cover two categories:
- One-party Notification: Only one party must consent for a recorded call to take place.
- Two-party Notification: You’ll need clear agreement from both parties in a call before recording.
Note: If you record calls from a location where only one-party consent is needed to a place where two-party permission is needed, the two-party notification law applies.
It’s good practice to inform customers if you’re going to record the call, irrespective of the legality. It boosts customer trust and brand transparency while protecting you from lawsuits.
Once you’ve checked all boxes, phone call transcription can reap huge benefits for your business.
Now let’s look at how your business can benefit from call transcription.
6 Key Benefits of Transcribing Phone Calls
Let’s dive deeper into the advantages of using call transcription software in your organization:
Keep a Record of Agent-to-Customer Phone Calls
When you track and record agent-to-customer conversations, you empower employees to handle customer queries better and boost overall customer satisfaction.
Let’s say a customer has been on the phone with Agent A for about 20 minutes, trying to deal with their query. The call suddenly drops, and the customer is put through to a new agent, Agent B.
Instead of asking the customer to repeat their query, Agent B can scan over the speech to text transcription to see how the last conversation ended.
With records of agent-customer interactions, you can also:
- Gain valuable insights about your customer base
- Easily refer to keywords and statements
- Share records across departments
- Optimize workflows
Turn Transcriptions into Training Resources
Transcription software can aid in converting a recorded audio file into training resources for customer service teams and sales call agents.
Here’s the deal:
Trainers can offer transcripts of high-quality customer-agent phone calls as a working example of the ideal interaction between customer and agent.
This serves as a benchmark for agents as they can always revisit the conversation and improve their performance.
Hold Onto Transcriptions for Legal Purposes
It’s rare that a business needs to provide call transcriptions for legal purposes. However, it’s best to be prepared for such a situation.
Call transcription provides hard evidence of what was said between agents and customers and how queries were handled.
But one must ensure that all call recordings are legally acquired, and parties are notified.
Boost Accessibility
Businesses must always strive to be more accessible for people with disabilities — whether they’re employees or customers.
Automatic transcription enables people who are hard of hearing to learn from your calls too.
Conversational Insights
Prior to the arrival of call transcription, discovering conversational insights was no easy task.
Today, however, conversational insights can boost customer interactions and improve organizational KPIs.
It can also provide you with information related to customer experience.
For example, is a customer more likely to upgrade their service if an agent uses a particular phrase?
Such information can prove to be invaluable for your organization as it helps to better understand the customer journey.
Scan Transcriptions for Information
A simple text file compared to an audio file simplifies the process of analysis by magnitudes. Transcription makes it much easier to scan, reference, and understand the information in any phone call.
Best of all?
Audio and video transcriptions can be stored and saved to a centralized location making it easily accessible for all employees.
Need further clarification regarding transcription? Let’s answer some related FAQs:
2 FAQs About How to Transcribe Phone Calls
Most live transcription software allows you to perform real-time transcription of recorded audio content. This content can come from a telephone call, conference call, video call, podcast, or an app like Zoom.
Here are some common questions regarding recording phone calls and transcription software.
How Can You Record and Transcribe a Phone Conversation Using Your Mobile Device?
There are different applications compatible with various mobile devices.
However, it's important to note that transcribing via a phone app isn’t ideal as there’s no way to automatically draw out customer insights and spot trends. If you run a business or contact center, it’s best to opt for dedicated solutions like iovox Insights.
Only use these options if you need to casually transcribe something on the go.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of your options:
iPhone Devices
- Google Voice App: This recording app can only record incoming calls, and the caller must call using a Google Voice number.
- Voice memo app: Pre-installed on all iPhones, the Voice Memo app allows users to record calls. Put the call on speakerphone and start the audio recording.
- Rev Call Recorder: It’s a free call recording app only available on an iOS device. You can also use Rev for text transcription.
These applications can be found in the Apple app store.
Android Devices:
- Automatic Call Recorder: Free recorder app for any Android device.
- Live Transcribe: Another Google-led development, Live Transcribe uses the phone’s microphone as its primary input to transcribe audio files.
- TapeACall: A recording app available for both Android and iOS devices, TapeACall also offers unlimited recordings.
- Cube Call Recorder: Great for recording calls on an Android device and an iOS device.
You can find these Android phone applications on the Google Play Store.
Google Pixel Devices:
- Live Caption: Only compatible with Google Pixel devices (Pixel 2, 6, and 6 Pro), Live Caption turns audio content into text. It can also aid those with disabilities to access all kinds of content, like podcasts and videos, in real-time.
Pro-tip: Once you’re done recording calls, it’s important to export them as an audio file. This is usually done using email, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
Single-Channel or Dual-Channel Recordings?
A host of variables could affect the quality of a voice recording, directly impacting the transcription quality. These include things ranging from background noise to varying caller accents.
That’s why selecting the optimal type of recording is imperative to ensure accurate transcription.
These two types include:
- Single-channel recording: This type of recording stores a single high-quality recording track before transcription takes place. It’s perfect for compliance reasons, as only the agents’ side is recorded.
- Dual-channel recording: Unlike single-channel recording, dual-channel recording stores both sides of the phone conversation. This can help boost the accuracy of transcriptions, especially in a conference call with multiple speakers.
Final Thoughts
There’s no denying call transcription is beneficial. It can assist your organization by improving employee training programs and boosting overall customer experience.
Transcribing a phone call and storing it can be instrumental in identifying trends that impact your business.
Add to this, transcribing calls has never been easier, especially with the right software by your side — like iovox Insights.
iovox Insights allows you to analyze data pulled from every phone or conference call recording.
Get started with iovox Insights today and start transcribing phone calls in seconds!
To connect, simply click the call button below, and we’ll be in touch with you shortly.
You can also email us at hello@iovox.com or give us a call toll-free from within the US at +1 888 369 9519.
From outside the US please reach us at one of these numbers:
London, UK +44 (0)20 7099 1070
Sydney, Australia +61 (0)2 8520 3530
Paris, France +33 (0)1 84 88 46 40