Zendesk Talk call transcription and summarization FAQ

Available on all Suite plans Available on all Talk plans

In this article, you'll find frequently asked questions and answers about call transcription and summarization in Zendesk Talk.

In the following sections, you'll find frequently asked questions related to Talk call transcription and summarization:

General questions
Troubleshooting questions

General questions

What options are available for call transcription and summarization in Zendesk Talk?
Call transcription and summarization are included as part of the Advanced AI and Zendesk QA add-ons. The underlying service which transcribes and summarizes calls is the same, but what differs is where the resulting transcripts and summaries are viewed and how they are used.
- Advanced AI add-on
  Call transcripts and summaries are added to the conversation log on tickets in the Agent Workspace. Transcripts and summaries provide additional context to voice tickets and reduce the requirement for agents to take notes and summarize calls as part of their wrap-up activities.
- Zendesk QA add-on
  Call transcripts and summaries appear in Zendesk QA where QA-focused users can review and analyze historical call interactions in detail. Voice QA evaluates the call transcript and provides a QA Score just like it does for chat or messaging conversations which can be used to identify the conversations where there’s a churn risk or an agent knowledge gap.
How do I activate call transcription and summarization?
If you have a subscription for either the Advanced AI add-on or the Zendesk QA add-on, you can turn on call transcription and summarization on the Talk settings page in Admin Center. Depending on which add-ons are subscribed to, admins can configure which phone calls get transcribed and summarized and whether the resulting transcripts and summaries appear in tickets in Agent Workspace or in the QA tool.
Is every phone call transcribed and summarized in Zendesk Talk?
No, only calls which are recorded can be transcribed and summarized. On the Talk settings page in Admin Center page, admins can turn on the transcription and summarization functionality for some or all phone lines that have turned on call recording.
How are call transcriptions priced?
Call transcriptions are charged at USD$0.01 per minute of transcribed audio. Transcription charges are rounded up to the nearest whole minute. Transcription charges are processed together with other Talk usage charges (e.g. phone number charges, call charges, recordings charges, etc.) and deducted from an account's Talk credit balance. For more pricing information, see the Talk pricing page.

Note: If calls are transcribed as part of both Advanced AI and Zendesk QA subscriptions, transcription costs will only be processed once for a given phone call. You won't be charged twice.
Where do call transcripts and call summaries appear in the Zendesk Agent Workspace?
After a phone call ends and the call recording audio file becomes available to play in a ticket, the call transcript and summary will get added to the ticket conversation log as internal notes.
In what language will the call transcript be generated?
Call transcripts are generated in the same language that was spoken in a phone call. If more than one language is used, then the transcript will automatically adapt. Transcription is available for all supported Zendesk languages (see Zendesk language support by product for the full list).
Are voicemail recordings also transcribed?
Yes, English-language voicemail recordings can also be transcribed into text. No other languages are supported for voicemail transcription at this time. See Configuring voicemail options.
Is the call transcript or call summary shared with or retained by a third party? Is customer data used to train the models?
The transcription and summarization features are powered by OpenAI’s Enterprise service. OpenAI will not use Zendesk customers' inputs to train its models or otherwise improve its services, and Zendesk customer data will not be hosted by OpenAI except briefly for the purpose of providing the service. See Zendesk AI data use information for more information about how your data is protected.
How can customers export their transcription charges?
From the Talk Usage charges page in Admin Center, users can review their transcription charges for a given period and export a CSV file containing a detailed breakdown of charges. See option to Export CSV > Export detailed charges CSV. Users receive an email with a ZIP file attachment, which contains the CSV of charges for the period.
Is the call transcription and summarization functionality available for Talk Partner Edition?
At this time, the Zendesk transcription and summarization feature works for Zendesk Talk customers only. However, several existing Talk Partners already offer a transcription services, which includes adding call transcripts to tickets in Zendesk.

Troubleshooting questions

Why do call transcripts sometimes contain errors or inaccuracies?
Today, the best speech-to-text algorithms are around 90% accurate, meaning that for every 100 words processed, only 90 are accurately transcribed. Many factors can influence the accuracy of the transcription, including background noise, speakers talking over each other, poor quality audio connections or network signal, speaker dialects, quiet speech, or words and phrases not being in the training model database.
Why is the call transcript or call summary different to what was spoken on the call?
On rare occasions AI can "hallucinate" and provide an innacurate answer if it is acting on limited data. The primary cause of hallucination lies in the limitations of the training data and neural network algorithms that AI models use to 'learn.' AI models, particularly those based on deep learning, learn patterns and associations from massive datasets. If the training data is biased, incomplete, or contains errors, the AI may develop skewed perceptions, leading to hallucinatory outputs. For example, hallucinations can happen when there are periods of silence or background noise in a Talk phone call, making it challenging for the AI to figure out what was actually said.
Why doesn't the call transcript identify or label speakers e.g. agent, end user?
This is a limitation when call transcripts are added to the ticket conversation log. We are exploring options to improve this. Call transcripts that appear in Zendesk QA do not have this limitation.
How can I prevent the call transcript taking up a lot of space on the ticket conversation log?
For customers with a subscription to Advanced AI, there is an option on the Talk settings page in Admin Center to hide the call transcript on tickets. In the future, agents will be able to expand and collapse the call transcript.
Why is there a delay in creating a ticket from a voicemail when transcription is turned on?
When a voicemail contains no speech or transcription cannot understand the voicemail, it will retry the transcription three times. This might lead to a delay of up to 30 minutes before the ticket is created.