Lifechanger - Voicemail Transcription

I guess it's true that there is no such thing as bad press. I first heard of Simulscribe in Mike Arrington's scathing indictment of Simulscribe's CEO as a "spammer".

Not much later, Brad Feld told me he was using the service. Then I googled it and saw that Greg Clayman had written a favorable review of Simulscribe on his blog last fall.

A classic case of "I hear it once, I file it away in my brain. I hear it twice, I pay attention. I hear it three times, I get it".

So I got Simulscribe this week. To be honest, I couldn't figure out how to use the service based on the welcome email. So I emailed back that the instructions didn't work for me on my blackberry. I thought that would be the last I heard from Simulscribe. But to my pleasure, I got a call on my blackberry from a guy who told me how to change my "forward" "busy" and "unreachable" numbers on the blackberry and I was good to go.

Enough about how I got to this service. THIS IS A LIFE CHANGER. What Simulscribe does is reroute your voice mails to their service which is a traditional voice mail service, with the exception that it TRANSCRIBES the voice mail and emails it to you along with the wav file so you can play the original voice mail.

I can't tell you how powerful transcription is. You really have to see it to believe it. I was in a board meeting yesterday morning. The Gotham Gal called me. I had the blackberry on vibrate so I saw the call, but couldn't step out to take it. Within a minute (yes, less than 60 seconds), I had an email saying she wanted to know if she should call Time Warner Cable. I texted her back to say that I'd take care of it. That was awesome. Didn't miss a beat in the board meeting either.

Back in the Flatiron days, we had outlook integration with our office voicemail. All voicemails would be emailed to us as an mp3 file. I loved that feature and never checked my voicemail other than via email. Now I've got that back, plus transcription. I am in heaven.

So I am now going to forward all my various voice mail services (home, office, cell) to one voicemail box and get all my voicemail messages via email on my blackberry and laptop. This is a life changer for sure.

There is at least one other company that provides a similar service called Spinvox. To be honest, I never thought of trying them out. Two positive recommendations from two people I completely trust is all I need to go with a vendor.

I've been showing my Simulscribe transcribed voice mails to everyone and Nick said to me yesterday at lunch that they might be using outsourced labor in addition to speech recognition in order to get that level of quality. Maybe they are. But I don't really care. The service rocks.

The price is $9.95 per month for 25 messages and then $0.25 per message after that. I get 2 to 4 voicemail messages a day on my blackberry so this will cost me $25/month for my blackberry and another $10 to $15/month when I add office and home to it. $40/month for voicemail sure does seem expensive, but I bet the price comes down quickly as others enter this market.

UPDATE: Jason Devitt's take on voicemail transcription services. Well worth reading if you are into mobile and voice stuff.

For now, I am happy to pay it. You don't get life changers like this every day.

Comments

[howard lindzon]

I am wondering and hoping that Nuance a stock I own is in this business or quickly buys one of these companies. Anyone know?

[Dan Tiernan]

Great concept, since you get it both ways. I really like the permanent record of a text email - but the tone is often so important that I recently added a piece of freeware that let's me record "voice emails" - for those instances where a phone call is not practical or time-sensitive, but tone is important. Particularly when you want to send the message to a group of people. www.voicesaver.com

Don't use it often, but it's nice to have.

[carl rahn griffith]

with the ubiquity of email-on-the-go and mobile IM, RSS, i wonder just how relevant voice messaging (and the conversion of, no matter how neat) really is in the future?

also, by their very nature, text/email messages are drafted in a concise manner and well thought-out/effective and easy to assimilate - as opposed to voice messages which tend to be (implicitly) somewhat verbose and often rambling; if the conversion service could filter out the peripheral verbage 'noise' and give me just the relevant 'message' i may see its value. otherwise, i remain sceptical of such services.

[Andy Swan]

Signed up. First test took 3 minutes from voicemail-to-transcribed and only had a problem with the spelling of an Indian name.

Note--you can also have the VM transcription sent to you via text message in addition to email, nice!

I do feel like this is a "life changer". Puts voicemails in the "to-do list" of my life (unopened emails), instead of sitting there on my phone for days at a time.

Now if they can perfect a "respond via text/email" function, they'll be my new favorite company!

[Ken Berger]

IVR (interactive voice recognition) is what this stuff is filed under, and lots of providers are emerging. Check out Metaphor for a good one.

I use Vonage very happily mostly for their non-phone call offerings: re-routing to whatever phone I'm carrying ("simulring"), virtual numbers, and emailed mp3 VM's, which they've had since the start. Transcriptions are in the works there too from what I hear.

[Darryl Ballantyne]

Fred, are you worried about privacy concerns at all?

The question is - how are the voicemails being transcribed? If it's automated, no problem. But if it's someone sitting there listening to your voicemails and transcribing it, as Nick suggests, there could be a lot of information in those voicemails that you wouldn't want a random person to hear, particularly for a VC.

Thoughts?

[OffBeatMammal]

I use SpinVox (on a recommendation from Guy Kawasaki) and have been amazed at the service.
It's quick, it's simple and it works. Ironially the only mis-recognized/transcribed word I've had is my own name!
It's much better than the Vista reco engine and the transcripton seems really smart... compressing the message into 160 chars...

[cotter]

David Pogue in the NYT had a nice review on these guys 2 weeks ago - i got it the next day. Totally agree - it is like sliced bread/night baseball, etc etc. love it!

[Shripriya]

Fred, R has been using this for several weeks. He loves it. When he's in India he has both his US and India blackberries. But with this, he doesn't need to pick up his US cell as all messages are emailed to him. Just yesterday he forwarded me an email of one of my voicemails. The transcription was perfect!

[Bill Koss]

How is this different from www.j2.com? I have been getting my voice mails via email in a gsm format for five years? Just curious...

[Bill Koss]

I guess looking at it more carefully it is different. I see the value. Pretty cool actually.

[Daryn]

Jott ( http://www.jott.com ), here in Seattle, has a transcription service that is pretty handy, although they approach it from a notes standpoint rather than for voicemail.

It's free and works great, however, I found out that they use purely human power for transcription, and that they don't do anything smart/complex as far as breaking up and reassembling messages, so I find it a little more scary (and a little less impressive).

[Michael Parekh]

Your post was the third nudge for me that got me to subscribe today. I'd seen the company at a conference a few months ago, and thought it was a potentially cool service. Then came the David Pogue review in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago, and your post today.

Hope you get an extra free month from the service for every subscriber you convert today!

Thanks,

m

[DH]

Darryl has a point - the way the voicemails are being transcribed is important, and I imagine even more so for a VC. Also interested in your thoughts...

@Daryn: Jott is pretty good. Been using it for a while, though AFAIK, they're using a mixture of human and technology for the transcription process.

My experience with it inclines me to believe that it's more technology (ie. the results I get seem more like a voice recognition application than a human).

Won't be joining Simulscribe anytime soon (don't need it), though Jott has been a useful tool and I use it occasionally.

[Dick Costolo]

here's the future: people will start talking to the transcriber, as in they know you transcribe all your vm and don't get it directly so they will dictate their message to the transcriber, as in ""sh*t, don't write that down, i didn't mean to say that. ok write this, starting over, write this. are you ready? this is my message...." etc. :)

[Jason Devitt]

Howard - Spinvox definitely uses technology from Nuance, Simulscribe I don't know. Nuance is the Microsoft of speech recognition; they make many great services possible but it is always possible that they will compete with their partners.

All - both companies use humans to tackle particularly difficult words. Spinvox has a patent for doing this with humans alone. But Spinvox at least is heavily reliant on speech rec at this point. The service couldn't scale without it.

I wrote about Spinvox today too:
http://www.brash.com/brash_dot_com/2007/03/spinvox.html

[Giordano]

Does it work outside the US? Or is there another similar service that works in Asia (I have a Singapore mobile)?

Would love to get this!

Cheers,
Giordano

[Daryn]

@DH: You're right. In Jott's faq, they say it's a combination of technology and human power. Ancedotally though, I've heard that the technology is not used for translation/transcription at all, just for the way they move the audio and text around.

It's a great product either way, just something to be aware of.

[carl rahn griffith]

i would be very, VERY uneasy with an anonymous someone transcribing my private or business voicemails - no matter how useful the service may appear, that is totally unacceptable.

[Charlie Crystle]

Once again, my Treo isn't working. So now I use Skype to retrieve my messages. I'm gonna sign up.

As for the Treo 700w, I'm looking forward to getting rid of it soon. The updater doesn't work, so I still have the less stable version.

There are 5 things I want to design during my life: a cell phone, an airport, an airplane, a car interior, and a YMCA. I'm helping on the last one, but I wish I could nail the first one too. I'm tired of phones that try to do too many things and do them poorly. I include the Q, Blackberries, and any number of others.

Sigh. thanks for the tip.

[Ryan]

Great write up. I think this technology is amazing. Im using spinvox and love the service. They are really a first class company. Their service is easy to set up and use. The transcriptons are coming to me within a minute...at the most two. I had a question with setting it up on my phone and their customer service was great. I would recomend them to anyone. they are also providing a free one year trial of their service.

[chris sivori]

I wrote a review of this including transcription results:

http://www.letterneversent.com/index.php/archives/2007/03/10/my-review-of-simulscribe-voicemail-transcription-service/

[R. Titus]

I use SpinVox; I agree, this is the single most important technology I've begun to use since I got my blackberry. It's simple and it works. I used to have my assistant transcribe messages from 4 different voicemail boxes. Now they all get emailed to me - with livetext clickable numbers..

I used both services and frankly feel there's NO comparisom. SpinVox rocks - also it handles accents MUCH better.

Also, customer service is stronger and it's a seamless user experience.

[teddy]

Transcription Services this site i found to contain the best information for transcription services

[sfberglund]

What about using it in combination with this http://www.acappella.com.au to have your multi-party telephone conferences transcribed and emailed to each "attendee"? That would be cool...