A much sought-after service for which many general transcription firms are currently receiving job assignments is that dealing with interviews. There are many interview scenarios that call for this service and such include business, job, doctor/psychological, teleconferences, journalist, market research, legal, police, and multiple participant interviews. Organizations often choose to outsource the interview transcription task to transcription firms because this is an assignment that can take a long time to complete and it will thus be an extra overhead for their (perhaps) already overstretched staff. Although transcription software exists, it has been proven time and again that human-based transcription is most ideal for detecting accents and the number of participants, and with good accuracy at that.

Unlike general transcription, one requires superior listening skills to transcribe interviews. This is because the client may require you to detail every single word uttered including the mhhs, ohs and ums, among other mumblings. However, most companies can do with interview transcription based on intelligent verbatim e.g. eliminating music and adverts for live TV interviews. Nonetheless, professional transcription should be able to offer regular or absolute verbatim or any other style that the client may deem necessary. The client should however be prepared to pay more for the latter absolute transcriptions.

The interview transcription process starts at the client uploading the interview file to the transcription firm. Most firms take formats such as .mp3, .mp4, .wmv, .wma, .avi, .flv, .dss, .rm, .mov, .mpg and .mpeg. Just like for general transcription, many firms do not accept tapes, CDs or DVDs. After all, they are cumbersome, need storage space, and even require delivery services. Upon being downloaded the file is checked for any issues it may have and then the transcription can commence. The transcribed file is then uploaded to the client. Clients are always encouraged to look for firms that offer free samples of their interview jobs so that they can assess the quality of their transcribing jobs. The best firms are able to handle interview transcripts involving more than three participants and will list them as speaker 1, 2, 3 and so forth, and also include timestamps.

The manner in which fees for the interview transcription service rendered is charged matters. The most preferred payment model is that based on the length of the transcript. Some firms charge by the length of time taken to transcribe the file but this is not a client-friendly payment model as the transcriber can take his/her sweet time to complete the job. Most organizations go for the transcription length model but just like other general transcription services it is always subject to surcharges depending on the difficulty of the transcribing task and whether the client requires regular or absolute verbatim.