Billable utilization at professional services has been falling to its lowest levels. This comes at the same time as Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index found that people are in nearly three times as many Teams meetings and calls per week as they were in 2020. The crux of the two trends lies in how meeting notes for consultants capture client requirements, document decisions, and turn conversations into billable work.
From discovery call to deliverable
For consultants, what tends to matter in an engagement often comes in the messy middle: long discovery interviews, stakeholder workshops, recurring check-ins… In Microsoft’s survey, 55% said the steps to follow after a meeting are unclear, with 56% believing it’s hard to summarize what happened.
It’s easy for the constraints, preferences, and risks to all get lost in your memory and scattered notes. A misread client expectation turns into coming up short on scope, so centralizing structured meeting notes is what protects this scope. This is where audio-to-text and meeting notes for consultants help teams revisit exact wording, preserve client expectations, and bring new members up to speed.
But it’s not a full script that is useful to interact with; it’s the layered structuring of it that can be applied. Effective meeting notes for consultants prioritize decisions, open questions, and next steps, linking back to the full transcript only when someone needs the exact wording.
A workable version of meeting intelligence for consulting delivery keeps the recording but changes what gets shared. Tools like Summary AI can immediately draft the decisions and action list for you, meaning the engagement lead reviews them before anything reaches the client.
By organizing insights sequentially (initial discovery -> stakeholder workshops and status reviews), teams can build up a searchable archive. Querying it saves time and improves communication retrospectively.
The hours behind the utilization number
SPI’s 2025 benchmark called 75% the optimal level of billable utilization. The 2026 edition covered 500+ organizations and 245,000+ consultants, meaning it’s very much a sector-wide drift. Microsoft’s survey put the heaviest meeting users (top quarter) at 7.5 hours a week in meetings.
One investor proposes the notion of a changing pricing model. Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha argues that firms could bill per result rather than charging per hour, suggesting such a change could produce gross margins as high as 80 to 90% when AI carries most of the workload. But it’s just a projection.
Recording changes the room
Recording is what adds a legal question, but this depends on the state or country. In the US, Federal wiretap law lets a person record a conversation they are party to unless the purpose is a criminal act. About 11 states require every party’s consent, not just one, including California, Florida, Illinois, and Washington. In the end, it’s important to ask before recording, just to be sure.
For consultants, the practical answer is a short paragraph in the kickoff materials that covers consent, data handling, and who can access recordings. It’s worth standardising this, because if you rely on asking at the beginning of the meeting, you’ll be prone to forgetting. That is, until the software notifies the client and they feel an immediate breech of trust.
There should also be the option to pause recording for sensitive segments. At the end of the day, a consultant who is not typing can spend the call listening and asking better follow-up questions.
