5 Things Market Researchers Could Be Doing If They Didn’t Have to Transcribe Interviews

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6 min readSep 18, 2019

As a market researcher, your job involves a lot of organisation, multitasking and management. You simply don’t have time to waste when it comes to gleaning insights from research projects and focus groups. And gleaning insights means you need transcripts, but there are more productive things you could be doing on a daily basis rather than transcribing focus groups and interviews.

You need transcripts. Nothing beats the speed and flexibility of reviewing written notes.

If you don’t have time to review and act on your findings, however, then the whole process of creating the transcript was pointless. This is why so many market researchers turn to transcription services. They deliver accurate, high-quality transcripts that are tailored to your exact needs. This means you get exactly the information you want, presented in a clear, organised format.

If you’re still on the fence when it comes to the value of outsourcing your transcriptions, we’ve compiled a list of 5 more productive things you could be doing if you didn’t have to create transcripts.

1. Planning and commissioning research

Quality market research is the driving force behind every strategic decision your clients’ organisations make. When you spend less time transcribing, you have more time to dedicate to planning and commissioning the vital research that could drive future success.

Clear outcomes

You could spend quality time meeting with clients to negotiate and agree upcoming research projects. You would have more time to dedicate to planning so that your research would have clearly defined outcomes. With this clarity, you could be better prepared to brief both interviewers and researchers to ensure everyone’s aims are aligned.

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Comprehensive planning

You could spend more time liaising with the right people and ensuring that teams are adequately prepared for certain projects. There would be more time to prepare briefs and presentations to show to your clients and remind them of the value you bring them.

With less time spent transcribing, you could be assured not just of more data, but of better quality data!

2. Writing and managing the distribution of surveys and questionnaires

Capturing valuable data isn’t like picking ripe fruit from a tree. When it comes to market research, you need to ensure you’re asking consumers the right questions. The questions that will result in useful outcomes that can drive future success.

Quality

This means taking the time to research, prepare and write qualitatively rich surveys and questionnaires that are precision-engineered to help you mine insightful data from subjects. When you dedicate less time to transcribing, you have more time to prepare data capture materials of value.

Efficiency

You can spend more time researching exactly what you need to find out from consumers within your target demographic. This is an inherently more efficient way of working and can save you untold hours of wasted time asking irrelevant questions that don’t yield the insights that matter to your clients. You can take your time considering the phrasing of questions to ensure clarity and use a variety of open and closed questions to limit extraneous information.

3. Analysing, translating and presenting results

It’s not uncommon for market researchers to have vast quantities of data but little time to analyse that data and translate it into results that are of tangible use to their clients.

When transcribing focus groups and interviews in-house is no longer your burden to bear, you’ll have more time to focus on making gathered data valuable to your clients and building greater value into the service you provide. You can analyse the results you get from transcripts created for you by transcription services quickly and easily, because they have been tailored to your needs.

Transcription services offer you great choice in terms of how you want your results. You could get verbatim transcripts which give you raw data including speech tics like “umm”s, “ah”s and pauses. You can get intelligent verbatim transcripts which offer the full text with the fat trimmed off to make it easier to consume and parse and gain valuable insights from the source material. Or you can get detailed notes which offer a hyper-condensed version of your transcript which is mined for key data with all the off-topic or extraneous details removed.

With transcription services, you have the freedom to choose the right solution in line with your desired outcomes.

4. Advising clients or senior management on how to best use research findings

Some of the greatest challenges that market researchers face are presenting research data in a way that is easy to understand and advising clients on how to translate your findings into actionable strategy.

Researchers can uncover terabytes of research data, but if it’s not presented in ways which are actionable for the client, it does little to build trust or value in their services. Your clients are relying on your market research expertise to help them preempt their customers’ needs and position themselves as the solution to their clientele’s problems.

When you aren’t busy transcribing, you have more time to translate your findings into actionable items that are more closely aligned with the client’s needs.

5. Finding ways to gain an edge over competitors

As we get closer and closer to the 2020s, the business landscape grows ever more competitive. In an era where consumers know that they can afford to be fickle, your clients are looking for whatever opportunities they can find to give themselves a competitive edge.

But while that’s true for your clients, it’s also true for you.

When your market research company is able to provide tangible outcomes to clients, your reputation improves and, as a natural consequence, you gain more clients. The less time you spend transcribing interviews, the more time you can dedicate to coming up with innovative and dynamic ways to gain an edge over the competition.

Outsource your focus group and interview transcripts to a professional transcription service, and you’ll have more time to develop the innovative new approaches that will help your business grow.

What you should look for in transcription services

Waste is a thief. And the right transcription services can prevent hours of wasted time spent transcribing hours of recordings of interviews and focus groups. But while you value efficiency, you’re also extremely discerning in whom you outsource to.

It’s understandable that you should only entrust your transcription services to a company who is worthy of your faith and investment. Look for a professional transcriber who offers you speed, accuracy and security, allowing you to tailor your transcripts to suit your exact needs. You want a transcription service that ticks every box, so what exactly should be on your checklist?

They should be able to offer varying levels of detail (verbatim, full-verbatim or detailed notes) depending on the needs of each project for cost and time efficiency. It’s also advantageous if they can offer extras like timestamps. These also allow you to go back to pertinent data within the main body of recordings to help glean even more insights for your clients. Likewise, speaker identification makes it quicker and easier to mine transcripts for the data you need.

Market researchers have better things to be doing than transcribing. And choosing the right transcription services can give you the gift of time!

We hope this article about improving market research productivity has helped you! If you’d like to learn more about transcription services and the benefits they offer, our Ultimate Guide to Transcription Services is perfect for you.

Originally published at https://info.takenotetyping.com.

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