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Technology Convert your Voicemails to Text
Technology Convert your Voicemails to Text
| Convert your Voicemails to Text |
| Written by Martin Style | ||||
If you're like me, you hate having to dial into and listen to your voicemail and so when I found out about Phonetag, the new US based service that converts your voicemails to text and then uses SMS or email to send it to you, I was pretty stoked. Unfortunately, although their website shows that they support Australia, I must have been one of the first to use it as I never got the SMS feature to work. After a support request and a few emails, they got back to me saying that they have decided that they aren't able to send messages to Australia. However, I have still been able to use it with email.
Phonetag gives you a local Australian number that you can use to forward your phone to when you want it to go to voicemail (I got to choose a Sydney based number). Setting up the voicemail was simple and I recorded a personal message just as I would with any other voicemail system. I then forwarded my mobile to that number when it's busy or there is no answer. By default, the service makes an addition to the personal greeting that you record, telling your callers that their message will be transcribed and that they should leave their name and number. I immediately turned this off but soon after realized why it might have been necessary. When people you know call and leave a message, they usually think that you can recognize their voice and so don't bother leaving their name and number, so I would get a few messages that were transcribed as "Hi, it's me. Call me back", so I wouldn't know who it was. Luckily, Phonetag include an audio WAV file of the message so I can listen to them immediately on the PC. With the messages that I received, I found that most of them were transcribed accurately and if there were some words that were unclear, the system would try and spell it phonetically. If the whole message could not be transcribed, the system would tell you and you would just have to listen to it. Even if the caller hangs up during the message, Phonetag will tell you and you won't get charged for the message but if there is caller ID, you'd be able to see who called. If you're out and want to listen to your messages, you have to call in. Phonetag gives you a US number to call but you can also call your own phone number to get into the system. However, your mobile provider charges you for the call, whereas my provider (Virgin Mobile) doesn't charge me for accessing my Virgin voicemail system. I also thought that the pricing was quite reasonable, with 3 different plans. You can have unlimited for US$29.95 per month, 40 messages per month at US$9.95 per month and additional messages charged at $0.25, and you can also pay per message at $0.35 per message. All in all, I think that this is a great service but it's a shame that the SMS feature doesn't work in Australia. Check them out at www.phonetag.com
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Martin
said:
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... Following this article, the Chief Marketing Officer of Phonetag emailed me and offered me this 30 day free trial link for any readers. https://apps.simulscribe.com/signup/a/meltin |
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