Voicemail-To-Text: Is It Worth Your Time?
Posted on: 4 September 2014
In the fast-paced business world, time is of the essence. Even something as simple as checking your voicemail can take precious minutes away from the time-sensitive tasks of the day. This is why a growing number of telecom companies are offering voicemail-to-text services that help fully convert voicemails into text messages that can be read quickly and accurately.
Why You Might Need Voicemail Transcription Service
There are times when you might not be able to get to your voicemail messages. For example, you might not have time to step away from an important meeting to discreetly check your messages. If you're meeting with fellow coworkers, you might not want to seem impolite by checking your voicemail in front of them.
If you're traveling overseas, roaming charges can easily turn a simple call to your voicemail inbox into a rather expensive affair. Closer to home, poor reception in remote areas can keep you away from your voicemail messages.
For the above reasons, voicemail-to-text stands as an attractive alternative to ordinary voicemail messages. Voicemail-to-text takes a time-consuming and complicated endeavor and, through voice recognition software, simplifies it in the form of transcribed text messages. These messages can be easily read, shared and stored without major time-consuming hassle.
Benefits
The convenience of voicemail-to-text is one reason why it's becoming increasingly popular with users. One telecom giant recently integrated third-party voicemail-to-text capabilities within its successful voicemail app, making it easier for users to directly receive transcribed voicemails through their mobile device.
There are plenty of other reasons why voicemail-to-text is ideal for the fast-paced business environment:
- Voicemails transcribed into text messages can be read discretely during meetings or other situations where listening to voicemails would be inappropriate. You can also share your voicemails via text or email with others.
- Transcribed voicemails can also be delivered to your email inbox, although this capability usually depends on the service vendor. This gives you another way of permanently saving your messages.
- Under some circumstances, transcription can also add clarity to a voicemail message. It's a handy feature to have in cases where differences in pronunciation and diction can cause ambiguities in a voicemail message.
- Voicemail-to-text is also tremendously helpful to hearing-impaired users, as well as those who are in noisy environments and can't effectively listen to a voicemail over the phone.
Another major benefit of voicemail-to-text is the simplified way it works. Instead of going through cumbersome and time-consuming voicemail prompts over the phone, you can use your existing text messaging service or app to receive and read transcribed voicemails.
Drawbacks
No technology is perfect and while most voicemail-to-text services strive to offer the most accurate transcriptions possible, there's always some margin for error:
- Background noise can have a big impact on performance and even service availability. For example, heavy traffic or loud construction in the background can easily drown out a voicemail just enough to make an automatic transcript nearly impossible.
- As voicemails are transcribed through an automated process, it's not as accurate as transcription that comes from an actual human being. While these errors are usually miniscule, multiple errors can easily change the entire context of a transcribed voicemail, leading to a waste of time and resources.
- The majority of voicemail-to-text services are available only for English-speaking countries. This can make things complicated if you happen to do business with non-English speaking customers, as the service won't be able to transcribe what's being said by non-English speakers.
Final Verdict
In spite of the drawbacks, the convenience and flexibility of voicemail-to-text services simply can't be ignored. It's a handy feature to have if you're constantly on the go and need a flexible, easy-to-use and discrete way of checking your voicemails. Go to website for more information.
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