Monday, September 24, 2007

Too Busy to Listen to Voice Mail, Why Not Just Read It.

I am all for making things easier and saving myself some time but have we as a society become so busy (or a little too lazy) that we can't even listen to our own voice mails. There are companies such as spinvox.com and simulscribe.com that are providing services that will convert voice mails into text messages or e-mail. Maybe this is something you are looking for that will help you shave off a little extra time. Then this is probably the perfect service for you.

I don't know maybe it's me but it also feel like a privacy issue because they would be listening to my voice mails before I do and then type them up to send to me.

I don't think I have become that busy or lazy to listen to voice mail for a few minutes but from a marketing standpoint they created a service that people obviously want to use which has awarded them top reviews from some of the nations best newspapers, business and tech magazines. These type of companies took notice of how super busy our society has become and created a new niche in the industry.

What do you think about these types of services? Convenient or another way to make us more lazy?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I think perhaps that you may be overlooking one of the important benefits of this type of service.

We are often in locations and situations where taking telephone calls or listening to voicemail is either disruptive or simply not allowed.

Rather than lazy, might you consider that being able to see and potentially react to messages in these situations might be better characterized as courteous or informed?

John Fabrega
www.ViewYourVoicemail.com

Book Girl said...

In my post I said that it is not for me but maybe it is something that the readers maybe interested in to save themselves some time.

I also wrote that these types of services are getting good reviews and that the companies had taped into a new niche.

I feel as though you did not read my post completely before leaving a comment. I did not say don't use these types of services I wrote that it is not for me.

Anonymous said...

I work with SpinVox and recently read your posting on voicemail-to-text conversion services. I wanted to clarify a few things about your post and the way messages are converted by SpinVox in particular to address your concerns about privacy associated with the belief expressed in your post that all voice to text services operate through operators receiving messages and manually translate them into text.

This is not the case with SpinVox. SpinVox has developed a sophisticated learning system called the Voice Message Conversion System which carries out automatically by computer the majority of our voice to text conversions. Messages are converted by machine; humans are only involved to help train the intelligent system to improve its speed and accuracy (although our users do report already 97 per cent accuracy where other automated services deliver only the gist of what is said).

So, when the system encounters a word or phrase its does not know or understand, it is able to refer to a specialist in our language laboratory for assistance. The human then trains the system so that word or phrase becomes known to the VMCS for future use. In that way, the VMCS is constantly evolving and learning, increasing in accuracy and speed with each conversion. Only in exceptional circumstances would a member of our specialists require to see the whole of a message.

In terms of privacy and security overall, you should know that SpinVox enforces security at a number of levels and adheres to the high levels of security specified by our clients as part of their responsibility to their customers as a carrier – the everyday telecommunications brands through which the majority of your readers would get the SpinVox service.

Each of our employees is bound by the terms of their employment contract as regards handling confidential data and at least by the laws of the State in which they are employed. There is full traceability of the human/automated system interaction and if employees are found to have breached either, we will bring the full force of the law to bear upon them.