At the heart of IVR technology is speech recognition, which turns voice audio into digital information that computers can translate into commands or text. Because of this, the same technology that runs much of what IVR systems do can also serve in transcription.

A good portion of what IVR systems do today is information-gathering. Particularly with IVR survey tools, the systems will take audio information over the phone and turn it into text that a company or organization can use. The speech recognition technology that does this has taken many leaps forward in the last few years and is now very accurate.

Transcription has, of course, been around for a long time. However, it has historically been people doing the transcribing as opposed to machines—people able to listen to speech and type or shorthand type the information quickly, even on-the-fly as in the case of courtroom stenographers.

What IVR systems offer is a transcription tool that is very accurate and also very easy to use while also cost-effective compared to expensive people-based transcription. With only the overhead costs of the IVR system itself and the phone minutes, organizations and companies can do transcription for their own needs or offer transcription services for customers at a relatively low cost.

Users would simply call into the system, which would lead them through the various options for transcription. They would speak whatever message they want transcribed, which the speech recognition software would turn into digital information. The IVR system would then turn the digital information into text on the other end. Simple and effective.