Speech to Text (STT)

Speech to text is essentially speech recognition software, often based on Artificial Intelligence. It enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text through computational linguistics. Speech to text is applied to generate transcripts, captions or other written text that businesses today need. It works by “translating” speech into word-for-word written out formats.

Speech to text is powered by Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. ASR is the technology that transforms speech, or an audio signal, into text. It uses knowledge of linguistics, computer science and electrical engineering to produce the text. It’s often used as the basis for captioning and transcription solutions.

The advantages of using speech-to-text

Using speech recognition to convert audio and video into accurate text enables business processes to run smoother and more efficiently while also making it more accessible. Some of the most common corporate use cases for applying speech to text include:

Customer calls: Using speech to text to transcribe customer calls allows you to have a record and document to extract actionable insights from customer conversations quickly. These transcripts provide valuable feedback that enable improvements in both customer engagement and employee performance.

Searchable company content: can be applied to make audio and video files searchable. Searchable transcripts are particularly helpful for HR, marketing departments and event producers that need to search through interviews, podcasts or other content they’re streaming or recording to reference dialogue or pull out quotes. What’s more, having transcripts accompany video content makes the content SEO-friendly, with browsers like Google being able to ‘crawl’ the transcripts and list them higher in search rankings. This functionality can help companies and their content get discovered.

Documentation & note taking: Speech to text technology is being used by various businesses and industries to take notes in real-time or have notes to reference after calls. Speech to text can be applied to remove the need to jot down notes manually so professionals can focus more on the conversations they’re having, interviews they’re doing or events they’re attending.