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Are Jott transcriptions getting worse?

  • Posted: July 18, 2008  Topics: Internet

I'm a big fan of Jott and I still use it several times per week but I'm beginning to second guess Jott's quality control. When I first started using Jott, I was amazed at how accurate their transcriptions were. Mainly because Jott relies on human transcription, I rarely received a transcription that was different than what I actually said. And in the few instances where something I said was inaudible, my transcription would include a question mark after the word or words the transcriptionist may not have understood.

But now it seems my transcriptions are getting less and less accurate with no apparent attempt to indicate to me a word was not understood. I'm wondering is this is the result of growing pains since presumably Jott is having to do more and more transcriptions every day and thus has to hire more and more people that may not be as high quality caliber as the original set of transcriptionists.

Take this Jott for example:

Here's what I said: Talk to Bonnie about phone conversation with Amy.

Here's what Jott transcribed: Talk to Barney about phone conversation with Ernie.

To be fair, this "Barney and Ernie" transcription error could have been the result of me mumbling or not speaking clearly. Or even the result of a bad cell phone connection. So here's what I am going to do. I am including the actual audio file that Jott stores whenever you leave a Jott. Click the link below, listen to the Jott and leave me a comment. Let me know if it is me or Jott.

Here's the direct link for the audio file if you are reading this using an RSS feed reader or email and can not see the audio player above: Listen to the Jott transcription

1 comment for this blog post so far...

  • #1
    July 22, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Dick Dickinson

    To my ear Bonnie and Amy were clear.  But maybe that’s only because I had been primed by having first seen them in print.  Then too, if the transcriptionist lives in New Jersey, Barney sounds exactly like Bonny.  I would expect problems to increase as they hire new people and as corporate productivity pressures on the transcriptionists increase.  That is, no matter how careful and good the transcriptionist wants to be, his or her paycheck will probably depend on work quantity more than quality.

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Patric Welch

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