Dic2Doc FAQ

A. Here are some aspects which will help you to understand how toll free minutes get billed:
1. The number of toll free call minutes consumed by your dictators will always be more than the sum total of the duration of minutes from the resultant audio files. The telephone call duration starts as soon as the call comes in where as the dictation recording starts after the dictator logs in by punching the access code. Once logged in, the dictator has to punch in a couple of commands to actually start recording. Even while recording, the dictator can pause, rewind, play over etc. which consumes time while the call is obviously on and active, but nothing gets added to the actual recoding of the audio file.
2. Sometimes if the recording is not ok your dictators may even delete the dictation or may dictate and just save it rather than send it, but whatever call duration is used up in all these actions of the dictators would accrue to your account. So every single day the scenario would always be like this.
3. There are many cases where dictators pause in between a dictation, attend to some other call or work and then continue again. This adds to the minutes used on the line without adding much to the recorded audio. Not only that, there are many instances of dictators asking their managers / receptionists to call the Toll Free Number and then login in to their access code, but before they get to dictate are distracted by some other work and absolutely forget the fact that the call is still active. Typically they are blissfully unaware that you are being charged for every minute that the call stays on. So, although you end up being charged you do not get any dictation from such a call.
4. So in simple words, our billing sums up the toll free call durations and not just the amount of recorded minutes which is what you will end up receiving. So as an example one of your dictators can call in and dictate one file. The total call duration is the time starting from the moment the call is connected right up to call disconnection. If this call duration is say e.g. 6min 18 sec then your total call duration is rounded to 7 minutes. On the other hand you will end up receiving an audio file which can be of any size depending on what the doctor did during the dictation recording process but typically it would be in the range of 3 to 5 minutes.
5. Given below is a typical example of how and why there comes out to be a difference in minute consumption pattern vis-a-vis audio minutes that you as a client receive.
Suppose, one of your dictators calls with an Access code 79999 and our dictation server log gives us the following information about the call:
17:04:12 Answered call 1xxx555666
17:04:23 79999 Logged on
17:04:29 79999 pressed key [1]
17:04:29 79999 Created new dictation (70000096)
17:04:36 79999 pressed key [9]
17:05:08 79999 pressed key [1]
17:20:58 79999 Call timed-out while recording
17:20:59 Call has disconnected
17:20:59 79999 Disconnected It is clear from the hypothetical logs above that the dictator called in, logging into the server using the access code and then initiated the recording process but subsequent to that simply did not start dictating. The caller did not even hang up on the call. The silent call continued on and on. Fortunately, we have an automated system built into the dictation server which senses a lengthy silence and times out all such calls to minimize your loss. Clearly, as you can see the above call adds more than 16 minutes of usage to your account, without any useful audio recording contribution to your dictations received.
The dic2doc dictation system has this extremely useful silence cut off mechanism in order to save all our clients the extra costs associated with such calls that are put on hold by their dictators. The software module on our dictation server is designed in such a way that such blank calls get disconnected when continuous silence is detected for 15 minutes. Such cases lead to a huge difference between the actual audio recording length and the length of the toll free call. The relevant line in the log above is highlighted bold for your immediate reference.
6. Our dictation servers and systems are fully tested before they are deployed for commercial use. The logging of minutes and their conversion to reports is a completely automated and integrated process right through and is bereft of any manual intervention due to which there can not be any errors in the usage reports that we generate and send to you on a daily basis. 7. Dic2Doc is the most ethical company in this industry and perhaps the only one who provides these daily logs for minutes consumed in the most transparent of ways. Our objective is to earn by servicing your requirements so that you are satisfied and keep growing more and more by using our infrastructure. Therein lies our growth because at low volume and access code usage levels we hardly make any profits. That is the reason why we always aspire to make all our clients happy so that they then gradually scale up to higher plan slabs and consume more minutes on a monthly basis.