The Best Transcription Services for User Research

Read on to learn about the different ways you can generate transcripts, and what we like and hate about them.

User research can be exciting work. You get to dive deep into human behavior and experiences, uncover valuable insights and learn from them to drive innovation. 

But even the most motivated researcher dreads the labor of converting enormous piles of recordings to transcripts, especially when there is a deadline looming. Research transcription is extremely boring work, even if it is the key to uncovering what your users think and feel.

Why bother transcribing?

Researchers unanimously agree –  it is easier to extract data points from a text document, rather than rewatching hours of call recordings and interviews. Bless the written form, which makes it easier to focus more on understanding and extracting the information within.

In this article, we’ve compiled all the different methods that a researcher can employ to transcribe user sessions, focus groups, interviews, ransom calls, or meetings, along with the pros and cons they might pose.

From manually typing out recordings word by word, to using speech recognition technology and advanced analysis, here’s mostly everything you need to know about research transcription services.

What are the 4 types of transcription?

When it comes to transcription qualitative research, researchers typically recognize four main types of transcription:

1. Verbatim transcription: This is the most detailed form of transcription, capturing every utterance exactly as spoken. It includes all filler words (like "um" and "uh"), false starts, repetitions, and even non-verbal sounds such as laughter or sighs. Verbatim transcription is useful when analyzing speech patterns or conducting linguistic studies.
   
   
2. Intelligent verbatim transcription: Also known as "clean verbatim," this type removes filler words and false starts while maintaining the essence of the conversation. It provides a more readable transcript while still preserving the speaker's original words and intent. This is often the preferred choice for qualitative research transcription.
   
   
3. Edited transcription: This type focuses on capturing the main ideas and content of the conversation while cleaning up grammar and removing unnecessary repetitions. It's useful when the primary goal is to understand the content rather than analyze speech patterns. However, it's less commonly used in qualitative research where preserving the participant's exact words is often important.
   
   
4. Phonetic transcription: This specialized type uses phonetic symbols to represent the sounds of speech. It's primarily used in linguistic research and is less common in general qualitative research contexts. Phonetic transcription can be crucial when studying dialects, accents, or language acquisition.

What is an example of a transcription?

Here’s an excerpt of a transcript of a conversation between a user researcher and a designer. It was generated by Looppanel, and contains text highlights to indicate positive responses (in green) and questions (in blue).

How to Transcribe an Interview

As any savvy research expert would tell you, there are broadly three ways to convert enormous piles of audio/video interview recordings to research transcription, ready for extracting useful snippets and data insights from.

Manual Transcription

First, there is the trusted option of manual transcription, no surprise there. By doing it yourself manually or outsourcing to professional research transcription services, you can obtain a high level of accuracy and attention to detail. Manual transcribing also has the advantage of human interpretation, allowing for including context, nuances, and complexities like multiple languages. 

The disadvantage? Despite the level of control and customization manual transcription offers, it can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive. If you are doing it yourself, manual research transcription basically means a gazillion hours of mindless labor, which could instead be spent on analyzing and drawing valuable insights from the data. 

Automated Research Transcription Services

This is where the next option comes in – automated transcription service. These products basically use speech recognition technology to transcribe audio into text, much faster and cheaper than doing it manually. You just need to do a simple Google search to find free and paid options for qualitative research transcription software, accessible at any time.

The catch? Many of these software products are not all that brainy enough to fully capture the intricacies of human conversations like pauses, emotions, and dialects. It eliminates the possibility of human error found in manual transcription, but also introduces a new set of limitations when posed with multiple speakers, overlapping conversations, or background noises. Automated transcription services also do not offer customization or formatting options often, which means that you’ll have to manually do it later.

Thankfully, technology has evolved to present a third option - an intelligent research analysis tool that also works as an automated transcription service. These products go a step beyond simple audio-to-text converters with abilities like sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, and speaker identification. These research transcription services also offer advanced customization and formatting options, doing the heavy lifting by also summarizing large amounts of data efficiently for analysis. Work smart, not hard, yay!

Best Transcription Methods for User Research

Whether you’re trying to figure out how to transcribe qualitative interviews quicker yourself, or find the perfect automated transcription service, here’s all you need to know on how much each option will cost you in time and money, and the advantages they bring to the table.

1. Manual transcription by yourself

Many consider manual transcription to be quite obsolete and needlessly time-consuming, but it sadly is one of the most reliable methods out there. It eliminates the need for additional reviewing and editing, but is quite labor-intensive, especially with longer audio/video recordings. It also requires you to be proficient in listening, typing, and editing, with attention to detail.

Time taken: Can take hours or even days (decades maybe)
Accuracy: Most accurate, but still leaves room for human error
Cost: Free
Languages supported: Any language you are proficient in

2. Outsourcing to professional research transcription services

Many researchers outsource the manual work of transcription to professional agencies, especially if they have large amounts of data to transcribe. This offers the advantages of customization, eliminating confusion regarding linguistic ambiguities, etc. It is still very time-consuming, with a longer turnaround time than the simplest transcription tools. 

Time taken: Varies depending on the length of the audio file and the quality of the recording
Accuracy: Most accurate, but still leaves room for human error
Cost:  $0.50 to $2.00 per audio minute (estimated)
Languages supported: Supports multiple languages

3. Transcription tools

These tools use speech recognition technology to convert audio and video files to text, generating editable transcripts within mere minutes. It's faster, easier, and cheaper than manual transcription, but also has possibilities of error, especially with ambiguous-sounding words, phrases, or complex terms. Basically, it could think hors d’oeuvres meant orders.

Time taken: 1 hour of audio can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours, based on the tool
Accuracy: Less than manual transcription or professional research transcription services

4. Research analysis tools with in-built transcription

‍These automated transcription services can include features like in-built analysis and clip creation, to help you derive better insights from the transcripts generated. You can use these tools for focus groups, video conferences, or user research transcription, especially with the additional support they provide for qualitative data analysis. They’re quite savvy!

Time taken: 1 hour of audio can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours, based on the tool

Accuracy: Similar to  audio-to-text converters, but less than manual transcription or professional data transcription services.

Examples: Dovetail, Looppanel, Aurelius

Best Transcription Services in 2024 (based on use case)

Whether you're trying to decipher market trends, uncover UX secrets, or dive deep into qualitative data, there's a transcription tool out there with your name on it. 

Top Tools for Market Research Transcription

What is Market Research Transcription?

Market research transcription involves converting audio or video recordings of focus groups, interviews, and surveys into text format. If you've just wrapped up a killer focus group and drowning in hours of audio, these tools can make your life a lot easier.

Market Research Transcription Services

1. Verbit Go 

Verbit Go is a market research transcription service that offers a variety of plans for different budgets. You can choose to generate transcripts using their automated speech recognition software, or pay for the more expensive human-powered transcription, for higher accuracy.

Verbit Go uses human UK-based transcribers with skills and experience to consistently perform at a 99%+ accuracy level. They offers both Intelligent Verbatim (with questions summarized and chit-chat removed) and full verbatim transcripts (including every "umm" and "err").

They also provide a live note-taking service with discreet and professional typists who can dial into your session to take detailed notes as it happens. Typists are available 20 minutes ahead of your event and guarantee speeds of at least 100 WPM.

Cost: Starts at $1.48 per minute for transcription services. They offer flexible pricing options including Pay As You Go and business accounts.

Languages Supported: For both automated and human-powered transcriptions, Verbit recognizes English, French, Hebrew, Spanish and Russian.

2. Rev

Rev is one of the top audio and video speech recognition tools available in the market, offering market researchers the option to get transcripts generated by AI, or highly skilled human transcribers.

Rev allows you to to share audio/video for transcription through direct meeting integrations, file uploads, video links, or the free mobile app. Rev's AI Transcript Assistant can also provide instant summaries and key insights on your transcripts. Transcripts are editable. Collaborative highlights are also available to mark key insights and share them with stakeholders.

Cost: Starts at $9.99 /month, free plan available offering 45 minutes of AI transcripts monthly

Languages Supported: Mostly focused on English

3. Go Transcript

GoTranscript is yet another market research audio and video transcription service, that offers both AI generated and human transcription options for researchers. It’s heavily favored by academics and universities for its highly competitive pricing.

GoTranscript has a user-friendly interface for easy file submission and management, and claims around 99% accuracy for human transcriptions, with automated services being less reliable.

Cost: Costs $.084 per minute for human transcriptions, and $.20 per minute for AI-generated transcripts and slightly less accuracy

Languages Supported: Supports multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, and many more.

Top Tools for UX Research Transcription

What is UX Research Transcription?

A user transcript is a detailed, written account of a conversation between a user researcher and a user, capturing the complete user interview.

An interview transcription for UX research includes:

• The researcher’s questions and prompts
• The interview participant's responses, verbatim
• Notations for non-verbal communication (like pauses, laughter, or gestures)
• Time stamps to mark different sections
• Speaker labels to denote who said what

How to transcribe an interview for UX research? 

1. Choose the Right Tools: Select transcription software or services that offer high accuracy and support for the languages and accents involved in your UX research. Some popular options include Looppanel, Dovetail and Otter.ai.
2. Prepare Your Audio: Ensure the audio quality is clear and free of background noise. If needed, use editing tools to enhance the recording before starting the transcription.
3. Transcribe or Use Auto-Transcription: Begin transcribing the interview manually or use auto-transcription tools for faster results. Manual transcription ensures higher accuracy, while auto-transcription saves time and can be edited later for precision.
4. Review and Edit: Go through the transcribed text to correct any errors, clarify ambiguous statements, and ensure that the transcription accurately reflects the conversation. Pay special attention to any UX-specific jargon or terms.
5. Tag and Organize: Add timestamps and tags to key sections of the transcript. This helps in quickly navigating through the document during analysis and makes it easier to reference specific parts of the conversation for user research note taking or reports later.

When it comes to interview transcription for UX research, you want tools that can catch every nuance and integrate seamlessly with your analysis process. It's not just about words; it's about capturing the user's journey, complete with all its twists and turns.

Tools for Interview Transcription for UX research

1. Looppanel

‍

Looppanel is unique compared to other data transcription services on this list, as it also allows you to record your calls directly, and receive high-quality transcripts almost instantly. And we’re not just saying it because we made it.

Here’s some more of the cool stuff Looppanel can do. You can take notes with colleagues during your user interviews, saving key time-stamps of juicy quotes as they come up. 

No time to take notes? Our incredible AI-powered note-taker has you covered. It’ll generate notes from your transcript for you, with a dedicated analysis space where you can see all your data by question or tags. Easy-peasy, data-squeezy.

Cost: Has a free 15-day trial. Paid plans start at $30 per month.

Languages supported: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and Hindi

2. Dovetail:

Dovetail is a fully-loaded research repository product, which means you can transcribe, manually code your transcripts, analyze data across calls, and save “insights” all in the product. It’s a great qualitative research transcription software, and has a really useful tagging feature to help you analyze calls uploaded later by specific tags or themes. However, it doesn’t offer an option for note-taking during calls on the platform itself.

Cost: Free plan that includes 3 hours of audio per month. Paid plans start at $29 per month.

Languages supported: Over 30 languages including Japanese, Finnish, Hindi and Malay

3. Reduct

​​Reduct is a collaborative transcript-based video and audio platform for professionals across industries, including qualitative researchers, legal professionals, marketers and content creators. It offers AI-powered transcription with speaker identification, as well as Human-powered transcription for complex audio with more noises and accents.

Reduct’s transcripts are editable and exportable in all formats.

Cost: Starts at $24/per editor monthly for the Standard plan

Languages Supported: 90+ languages including English, French, Arabic, Dutch, Russian and Mandarin

4. Descript

Also a popular video editing tool, Descript can provide time-synced transcripts for your audio and video files.
Cost: Have a limited free plan available. Paid plans start at $12 per month.

Languages supported: Over 22 languages including English (US and UK), Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese

• Nvivo
• MAXQDA

Top Tools for Qualitative Research Transcription

What is transcription in qualitative research?

Transcription in qualitative research involves converting audio or video recordings of interviews, focus groups, and observations into written text. This process is essential for analyzing patterns, themes, and insights in qualitative data. Qualitative research transcription often requires a high level of accuracy and detail to capture nuances in participants' responses.

Best Transcription Services for Qualitative Research

1. NVivo

NVivo is primarily a qualitative data analysis tool that offers transcription services as part of its feature set.

It lets you upload various audio and video file formats to its online platform. Transcripts are editable–you can make changes, correct errors, tag speakers and edit formatting. NVivo also offers encrypted and secure storage, adhering to HIPAA standards and GDPR compliance

Cost: Users are required to purchase blocks of transcription time (e.g., €80 for 10 hours).

Languages Supported: NVivo supports transcription in 42 languages.

2. MAXQDA

MAXQDA is an extremely complex qualitative research analysis tool, but is ideal for academics and scientists who need deep, detailed analysis. It also offers transcription software for qualitative research, that doesn’t require a subscription or separate purchasing of a MAXQDA license.

The qualitative research transcription tool also offers a customizable dictionary you can submit to improve accuracy, and does automatic speaker detection, and timestamps. It’s also GDPR-compliant 

Price: Approximately $20 for 2 hours of transcription, with varying plans based on industry and use case.

Languages Supported: Supports over 48 languages.

3. Otter.ai

Otter is an extremely handy tool that also provides real-time captions for video meetings on Zoom and Google Meet, in addition to offering speedy automated transcription services.

Cost: Free up to 600 minutes of transcription per month. Paid plans start at $8.33 per month.

Languages supported: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Japanese

And there you have it! If you’re on a deadline and searching for market research transcription services, transcription software for qualitative research or the best transcription services for qualitative research, these are the various tools that can assist you in generating all the transcripts you need, to unlock the smartest insights and data points within spoken conversations.