Manifesto

Introduction

This document lays down Scribie's core set of beliefs which we subscribe to. These are our ethos and guiding principles. The goal is to publicly state these principles and address the various questions about us which are not answered anywhere else on our website. These beliefs have been formed over our course of existence and contain some lessons learnt the hard way.

This document is intended for our customers, transcribers, applicants, employees, contractors or anyone else who is associated with us in any manner. Please feel free to question and comment on these.

The Beliefs

We believe that our customers deserve the best possible transcript, regardless of the difficulty level of the file and it is our duty to ensure that the accuracy is as high as possible. We will redo the file as many times as required in order to achieve the highest possible accuracy.

We believe that our transcribers deserve the best possible compensation for their time and effort and the most accurate grade which reflects their performance. Our payment and grading systems have been built on this guiding principle.

We believe in a clean work environment. Our transcribers deserve the highest quality files to work on and we have the right to refuse service when audio quality is poor. We have a moral obligation to create a work environment which allows our transcribers to succeed and fosters their growth.

We believe in providing the best possible tools and software to our transcribers which reduce their time and effort and increase their productivity. However we do not believe that these tools and algorithms will replace our transcribers. Humans will always be involved in our transcription process.

We believe in merit. We judge the quality of a file on merit and the performance of our transcribers based on their work history.

We believe in equality and respect. We have high regard for both our customers and transcribers and are grateful that they consider us worthy of their attention.

Background

We started this service in 2008 with the aim of building a system which can produce high quality transcripts with the least amount of time and effort. Transcription is a labor intensive task which requires skill. The quality of the transcript is highly dependent on the skill level of the people involved as well as the audio quality of the file.

We therefore offer various rates and options to meet the demands of the market we serve. We offer the same accuracy level for each rate and the only factor which varies is the turnaround time. However, we cannot offer the same rate for all types of files as they require more time and effort. That has led us to institute an additional charge policy for such files.

This policy is unique to us in our industry. We have lost many customers, have been called out publicly and ridiculed for it, but we stand firm on it because of these beliefs. Internally, our system is a two sided marketplace and we have to balance both sides to make it work. And we are committed to making it work.

We intend to run a profitable business, but not at the expense of our transcribers or our customers. However, we do hope that with advent of better tools and technology, we will be able to offer the same rates for most files in the future.