Testing Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) providers is crucial when making a buying decision for your business. First, identify your priorities and consider features such as speed, multi-channel support, speaker separation, and deep search capabilities. To effectively test ASR providers, follow these steps: 1) Select 50 representative audio files from your company's data; 2) Send the same clips to each speech vendor for API testing; 3) Normalize text outputs for comparison; 4) Perform a Word Error Rate (WER) analysis on the files; and 5) Create visual representations of errors. Consider other variables like accuracy improvements with keywords, libraries, reprogramming, and custom training before making pricing conversations and decisions for your business.