Effective communication is one of the pillars of a successful business. When employees, customers, and other stakeholders can easily access and share information, it facilitates business growth.

However, poor communication leads to stress, low productivity, misalignment, and lost revenue.

According to the State of Business Communication Report from Grammarly, US businesses lose $1.2 trillion yearly due to miscommunication.

Luckily, there are several solutions organizations can explore to avoid a lack of communication.

One such solution is artificial intelligence-driven phonetic transcription. AI-powered phonetic transcription involves using AI to convert spoken languages into phonetic symbols.

Doing so improves accuracy and preserves linguistic nuances that might otherwise be lost in translation.

Keep reading to learn how this technology can improve business communication. We’ll discuss its application and benefits, as well as the distinction between phonetic and phonemic transcription.

What is phonetic transcription and how does it work with AI?

Phonetic transcription is the conversion of spoken languages the way they’re pronounced instead of how they’re spelled. This is accomplished using phonetic symbols—the most common of which is the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA).

Unlike orthographic transcription (which we would think of as regular transcription), phonetic transcription ensures the reader captures sounds and pronunciations.

For example, the phonetic transcription of an audio recording or video meeting won’t just read as “All employees must turn off their phones when they enter the customer service area.”

Instead, it will be written like this: [ɔːl ɪmˈplɔɪiːz mʌst tɜːn ɒf ðeə fəʊnz wen ðeɪ ˈentə ðə ˈkʌstəmə ˈsɜːvɪs ˈeəriə]

If this looks strange, it’s because it’s about capturing the exact sounds of speech rather than the spelling.

Understanding phonetic transcription requires learning specific symbols and pronunciation patterns. The gist is this: phonetic representation helps ensure precise pronunciation, which is especially useful in multilingual business environments.

AI automates this process and makes it faster. It uses advanced speech recognition algorithms and machine learning to automatically convert spoken words into phonetic symbols and then those symbols into readable text.

This means you get (almost entirely) accurate text transcripts in seconds rather than hours of manual work.

Benefits of AI-powered transcription for business communication

One major use of AI and similar technology is to make everyday business activities, including communication, easier. Some benefits of AI-based phonetic transcription include:

Improved communication

Communication can make or break a business, especially an international business. Good communication helps improve relationships with your staff, customers, and partners.

Poor communication, on the other hand, can ruin relationships and potentially result in lost sales and reputational damage.

AI-driven phonetic transcription supports effective organizational communication. It helps create accurate pronunciation guides, reducing misunderstandings when working across different accents and dialects.

It also means documents like meeting minutes will be accurate, regardless of the accents of the speakers involved.

Enhanced customer experience

According to research, 86% of consumers say that the experience a company provides is equally as important as its products or services.

In fact, they’re willing to pay more for it. But if they have a bad experience with a brand, the price is steep. According to PWC research, 17% will leave after just one bad experience, and 59% will leave after several.

One way to prevent this is through customer service training. Educate your team on the best way to handle customer interactions and provide clear guidance for resolving challenging situations. This can be enhanced through AI-powered phonetic transcription.

This technology can help representatives master the pronunciation of customer names, industry terms, and product names, creating more professional interactions.

Imagine how relieved a customer will be when a service rep pronounces their name correctly, especially if they’re used to having to correct people. That’s a priceless moment in building customer trust and rapport.

Time savings and cost efficiency

AI can transcribe hours’ worth of audio content into text in minutes, saving countless hours of manual work. It can also help your organization save money by reducing the need for manual transcription services.

Unlike some transcription tools, phonetic transcription reduces the chances of it being unable to decipher strong accents or unusual words. This means you can spend less time reviewing and correcting the finished product.

Of course, it’s still essential to review and edit the output for accuracy and clarity, as human interactions and languages have nuances and subtle emotional cues that large language models and other AI systems are still learning to understand.

Still, phonetic transcription can go a long way to speeding up the whole process.

Enhanced accessibility

Accessibility isn’t just a niche consideration. It’s necessary for businesses that want to thrive in an increasingly digitized world.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 16% (1.3 billion) of the world’s population has some form of disability. Organizations that implement accessibility strategies grant people of all abilities unrestricted access to their products, services, and information.

How can AI-powered phonetic transcription tools help? Consider communication with a client who has a hearing impairment. They can follow along with video conferences to a reasonable degree but struggle if people talk over each other or have poor connections.

Having live phonetic transcriptions can make this substantially more accessible, reducing the need for additional support or other assistance methods, which minimizes operational expenses.

Better documentation

Phonetic transcription is usually more detailed than regular transcription. It focuses on the actual pronunciation of words, including all the subtle nuances and variations that occur in natural speech.

This ensures precise transcription of specialized terminology in meetings, which is especially useful for technical fields.

Application of AI-driven phonetic transcription in business communication

Now you know the benefits of automated phonetic transcription for business communication, let’s look at some examples of how this technology can be used.

Onboarding for global teams

When a company brings on new employees, AI phonetic transcription can create pronunciation guides for team members’ names.

This helps foster respect and inclusion from day one. This technology allows new and old team members to practice saying colleagues’ names correctly before even meeting them.

Live meetings

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 35.13 million people work remotely at least some of the time. Thanks to technology and the increasing popularity of remote work, that number looks set to continue rising.

Remote work also means more companies will have employees who speak different languages and come from diverse cultural backgrounds.

This is another scenario where AI phonetic transcription is useful. This technology can capture and transcribe conversations in real-time, making it easier to create accurate meeting notes and records.

Sales calls

According to Salesroom State of Sales 2024, 80% of B2B sales interactions now happen virtually. This means sales must deliver a top performance almost every time to increase the chances of closing.

Automated phonetic transcription can help them accomplish this. It can help them practice pronouncing client names, company names, and key terminology before meetings. This creates a professional first impression and demonstrates cultural sensitivity.

AI phonetic transcription can also provide live captions and subtitles during these meetings. This improves the experience for attendees, which could also lead to better sales performance.

Differentiating between phonetic and phonemic transcription

Phonetic transcriptions are usually more comprehensive and capture every sound a speaker says through symbols. And because each sound has one symbol, phonetic transcriptions can sometimes be complicated.

Phonemic transcriptions, on the other hand, can be thought of as shorthand for phonetic transcription. Also called broad transcriptions, they use fewer symbols to describe each word.

A transcriber using this method to create a transcript will use similar symbols to transcribe similar-sounding words and syllables.

As long as the sounds are similar enough to involve the same pronunciation, the transcriber can represent them using the same symbol.

Here’s an example of how phonetic and phonemic transcriptions differ, with the last column describing a regional British accent:

As you’d notice from the above example, phonetic transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets, while phonemic transcriptions use forward slash brackets. You can also see the extra details in the phonetic transcription.

The extra information is useful for non-native speakers who need to understand how to pronounce the words correctly.

AI-driven phonetic transcription combined with human insight delivers exceptional results

Phonetic transcription can transform business communication from good to great. When integrated with artificial intelligence, it elevates it even further. Effective communication then produces engaged employees and happy customers, increasing revenue potential.

That said, for AI-powered phonetic transcription to really pay off, it must be combined with human oversight and cultural intelligence.

While AI systems do a remarkable job identifying and transcribing speech sounds, they can’t fully grasp the nuanced cultural contexts that shape communication.

FAQs

How do you transcribe phonetically?

If you want to manually transcribe things phonetically, then you’ll need to:

  1. Find an IPA chart online
  2. Get familiar with the letters and symbols on the chart
  3. Verbally pronounce the word you want to translate, noting what sounds you hear
  4. Write down the phonetic transcription symbols for each sound you noted
  5. Add stress symbols to multisyllabic words whose syllables are more strongly pronounced

How many types of phonetic sounds are there in English?

There are 44 distinct phonetic sounds (phonemes) in the English language, encompassing 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds.

Can phonetic transcription be used for any language?

As phonetic transcription focuses on the sounds of words rather than the spellings or meaning, it can be used to transcribe any language.

However, the phonemes will vary. For instance, Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes and six vowel phonemes, while Urdu has 48 consonant sounds and 11 vowels.

Originally published Jul 23, 2025