Is Live Captioning Beneficial to Your Business?

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]

Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Customer-Centric Design (CCD), take a look at Flevy's Customer-Centric Design (CCD) Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

* * * *

Communication is a vital part of business. It feels redundant to say, clichéd. Every cliché, though, holds truth, often overlooked, taken for granted, and when the cliché is spoken it breathes new clarity into both the phrase and what it references.

Communication defines internal and external business relationships: how working relationships between employees are, how the customer understands the product, how the business is marketed, and a ton of other examples. It is all communication.

In recent years, developments in technology have enabled these communication channels to be streamlined, made easier, even automated. Many businesses have embraced them. Anything which can aid communication is a no-brainer. Live captioning can be viewed upon in this manner.

What Is Live Captioning

Live captioning is the practice of transcribing sounds to text. This text appears at the base of a video synchronised with the audio so that the text details the audio.

They are different to subtitles, which only describes what is said. Captions includes what is said, who said it, and non-speech sounds (music – “orchestral fanfare” – and environmental sounds – “knock on the door” or “tree branch snaps”). The “live” aspect refers to the content which will be captioned: live content, that which isn’t pre-recorded.

What Are the Benefits?

The first thought which often comes to mind when there’s a mention of subtitles or captions is that it’s for those who are d/Deaf or have hearing impairment. The text at the bottom of the video will give them a means of accessing that which they couldn’t otherwise.

This is a great starting point. For businesses, it can simply be a means of improving a customer’s experience. Often those who are differently abled will have solutions themselves. Sometimes theirs might not be effective. For instance, some apps work by using a smartphone’s mic to pick up the external sound, which in a business’s case could be a Zoom call. The reception can be less than clear via this method, which could result in inaccurate captions, warping the meaning of what the speaker intended. If a business can be proactive on the accessibility front then the customer can be put at ease knowing that they are accounted for. There are services – like Verbit’s live captioning software – which uses AI to caption live content with 99% accuracy, accounting for different speakers too, meaning the customer’s experience will be of the highest quality.

There is, though, another angle to this: people who aren’t deaf and don’t have hearing impairment tend to watch videos without the sound on. It is often a default setting on social media that videos auto-play without audio. The other thing is that being on a phone in public then playing audio aloud isn’t always desired. Whether or not podfasters and people who watch videos at 2x the speed affect a new change for video consumption on a wider scale than their speed-running of what they want to listen to, watch, and internalise will be something to look out for too.

Environments can be, also, noisy. The audience may well have headphones in but external noise can still filter through because they don’t have noise cancelling headphones, so those closed captions can help here too.

In general, the fundamental justification, as alluded to above, is that closed captions are a means of communication. The text is another means of engaging with the audio. The text can supplement the audio. If a word within a sentence doesn’t one-hundred-percent hit then the text can save it. A spoken sentence can read clearer than it sounds. It is like a Plan B within a Plan A. It is simply beneficial.

Want to Achieve Excellence in Customer-Centric Design (CCD)?

Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Customer-Centric Design (CCD). Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.

In the modern Digital Age, advances in technology and communication, combined with the explosive growth in data information, have given rise to a more empowered global customer. Recent economic and political events highlight the need for organizations to understand how consumers view the world and the most important attributes for their purchasing decisions.

Thus, increasingly more organizations are seeking to invest and focus on Customer-centric Design. A clear understanding of customer needs and behaviors across the organization will help drive profitable growth strategies and provide the confidence to invest in opportunities at a time when staying within budget can be extremely difficult.

Learn about our Customer-Centric Design (CCD) Best Practice Frameworks here.