Comments Disabled In the past six months use of ChaCha has exploded by over 50 percent to where we are now answering nearly 600,000 questions a day. All of this free to users. This requires an extended workforce of more than 55,000 guides. Like every other business we have a budget we try to live within and we find that growth is outpacing our guide compensation budget. No one likes to issue or take a pay cut but we find it necessary to reduce the pay to Voice Transcribers from $0.04 to $0.03 per transaction in order to try to keep closer to our budget. The change will occur at 3PM EST on Friday, August 14th.
While we regret that a pay change is necessary, it’s important to note that up to this point Transcribers have enjoyed the highest relative pay of all Guide roles. Specialist/Generalist Guides and ChaCha headquarters staff both endured downward adjustments in pay recently, but we have been able to spare Transcribers the same sort of cuts until now.
On the positive side, with the introduction of new Transcriber Finder and Quick Answer tools, we’ve seen a marked decrease in the average transcription time, bringing this task in line with average Expedite times. Therefore, the new pay rate is comparable on a work-done basis to the Expeditors rate.
We continue to devote significant HQ resources to improving interface and Finder capabilities to reduce Guide times. Those with dual roles (EX and TR) have seen the major time-saving enhancements brought to Expeditors in late June. We’re exploring how we can further increase efficiency for the Transcriber role too.
Improving Guides’ ability to quickly and accurately do your work is my team’s #1 focus. Thanks for your ongoing commitment to the success of 1-800-2-ChaCha.
Esther Friend, VP of Guides
Click here to access the updated Guide Policy document.
About Esther Friend
