Interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald last week about writer Valerie Khoo getting rejected when trying to get some transcription work done. She’d contacted the Indian company mentioned in Tim Ferriss’ book about the 4-hour week, only to find they were too busy to do the work for her and would need to outsource it.  After shopping around via Guru.com and getting quotes from a few countries, including her own (Australia) she settled on a transcriptionist in the US.
Many VAs have commented on this article at the newspaper website.  Whilst Valerie did do some shopping around to find someone to assist her, it seems she completely missed checking to see what is available in her own country. Instead of contacting a Virtual Assistant network or transcription companies in Australia, she went through guru.com instead. Valerie is writing an article for business in Australia and yet looks overseas to find a solution for her needs.
Outsourcing is good but it doesn’t mean that outsourcing must also mean offshore – competitive rates can be found in her own country as well.
It’s funny how some clients insist on someone local for work that can be done truly virtually and then someone who is writing for the business audience in Australia starts promoting to go outside of their country to source what they need – when there is local support available. There has to be a balance there somewhere…
Valerie Khoo says
Hi Kathie,
For the record, I DID in fact research transcription companies in Australia. I did NOT, as you have written, “completely miss” checking to see what was available in my own country.
In fact, I shortlisted Australian VAs to about 8 providers, made initial queries to all of them and then got specific quotes from 3 of them.
I have used the same Australian transcriptionist all year as indicated in what I wrote in the blog:
“I often need audio recordings to be transcribed. I usually outsource this to a virtual assistant in Australia who charges $1.40 per audio minute. That’s about $84 per audio hour. We’ve never met, in fact we’ve never even spoken on the phone. We send her the audio files via email and she sends the transcribed Word document back the same way.”
I decided to try Guru as an experiment and was pleased with the experience.
Valerie Khoo
Kathie Thomas says
I had noted that you’d done some checking around, Valerie but that you had only indicated the one VA in Australia before having contact with another via Guru.
You made no indication that you had tried contacting any VA networks or similar here in Australia in your article. You could have posted a request with the network I manage and received quotes from VAs all over the country, as well as in other countries. My team members would have given you quotes very comparable with what you outlined in your article and with your new US VA. And there are at least a couple of other networks here in Australia I know of that you could have approached but you made no mention of any of them at all.
As you will have noted from the many VAs who did comment on your article, we felt you could have done further research in Australia first. You’ve mentioned Virtual Assistants in a previous article but without any seeming understanding of what we are or what we do. And with the mention of VAs you seem to focus on what’s happening outside of our country. Since you are writing for a column on business here in Australia, it would be nice to see the focus on services, in particular when mentioning VAs, provided here.
Wendy Weightman says
I agree, Kathie. It would have been useful to know that Valerie had researched Australian transcription services before looking overseas, although it appears this was merely to provide a comparison for the ‘experiment’.
Those transcription services who provided Valerie with quotes will no doubt be feeling ‘used’. After all, it seems there was probably no intention to actually follow through with any of them.
Most of the comments made in Valerie’s article conveyed reactions of disappointment and feeling that Australian transcription services had been completely overlooked, and that is certainly how her article came across.
It will be interesting to see whether Valerie’s new transcription provider remains an ‘experiment’, or moves to an ongoing business relationship.
And I, for one, would be interested to know what benefits were actually being looked for or gained, apart from the implied cost issue.
Wendy Weightman
Deanne Verrall, Principal says
I agree with you both, Kathie and Wendy. What about NCH’s fabulous directory of transcriptionists? I get a fair majority of my transcribing work this way and I have never had any complaints about my charges, my accuracy and my quick turnaround times. From my experience in talking to clients who have gone overseas for transcription, it ends up being a false economy as for one, it can be a pain in the butt to pay them (good old Aussie direct debit works every time here!) and they then need to spend time reading through the finished transcript and correcting grammatical errors (especially relevant if the transcriber’s first language is not English but also relevant for non Aussies, as the lingo can be hard to get a grip on) or outsourcing again to someone in Australia to proofread it.
I think it is sad when someone who sets themselves up as an ‘expert’ in commenting on Australian business issues, doesn’t follow through and support her fellow business women in Australia.
Kathie Thomas says
I can appreciate your comment Deanne about getting someone here in Australia to go through a transcript done by someone else in another country. I’ve been engaged in the past to proofread and tidy up transcripts done in another country and I do believe it would have been cheaper and faster in the long run if I’d been engaged to do the whole job, rather than just fixing it up afterwards. This doesn’t occur with all transcriptions but I’ve had a few to fix up over the years.