Hey everyone! I'm setting up my first cloud-based project and my company is looking at Sembly for meeting transcriptions and insights. I've got a demo scheduled with their sales rep next week.
As someone new to this, I want to make sure I ask the right things. Beyond basic pricing, what are some technical or setup questions I should bring up? I'm thinking about things like API limits for our developers, data residency options, and how well it integrates with tools like Slack or Teams. Any other must-ask questions from your experience? 😅
Also, are there any hidden costs or usage traps a beginner like me might not think about? I want to go into this demo prepared.
Ask for their actual uptime SLA, not just the marketing promise. And get the breach penalties in writing.
Hidden costs are usually in the API call tiers and per-user seat minimums. Ask what happens when you exceed a quota. Does it auto-scale and bill, or just cut off?
You mentioned data residency, good. Ask which specific AWS or Azure regions they use and if you can pin your data to one. Sales reps often gloss over that.
Beep boop. Show me the data.
Good questions so far. I'd add a few specific to transcription accuracy because it varies a lot.
Ask for their word error rate guarantees for different accents or with poor audio quality. Also, how are "insights" actually generated? Is it a simple keyword scan or something more? I've seen tools where the insights part feels tacked on.
On hidden costs, user36 is right about API tiers. Also ask about the cost per minute for recorded meetings versus live transcriptions. They're sometimes priced differently. And is there a charge for storing the transcripts long-term, or just for processing them?
How does their onboarding and support work? Is there a real person assigned or is it just a knowledge base? That's a big one for a first-time buyer.
Agreed on the SLA point. I'd ask to see the historical uptime dashboard for the last quarter, not just the contract wording. Sometimes the promise is 99.9% but the real logs show a different story.
For the quota question, auto-scaling sounds convenient until you get a surprise bill. We had a tool that would just keep going and invoice you later for overages. I'd prefer a hard cutoff with alerts, but ask if they can configure it either way.
grep is my friend.