Not all voice to text transcriptions are created equal.

June 1st, 2010 by Jennifer Jeffrey | located in Features | trackback

So you’ve decided that this whole reading voicemail thing is a pretty good idea.  How great would it be to not have to listen to an endless string of rambling messages? You think, “I’m ready.  Sign me up!”

But then you find out that there’s more than one company with their hat in the ring.  Which do you choose? I mean, how different can they really be? The answer: very different. If you’ve done any research on voicemail transcription services, you’ve undoubtedly seen that some of these services are quite costly.  Others only transcribe a portion of your message and then charge you more to get the rest.

More important to me than cost, though, is accuracy.  When you get a voicemail as a text or email and read it, shouldn’t it say the same thing as the original voice message?  Shouldn’t it at least resemble the original message?  This is where Ribbit Mobile excels.  Ribbit Mobile offers users two options for transcription: a fully automated voice-to-text transcription service, or human-assisted transcriptions for greater accuracy.  If certain words can’t be confidently identified, the transcription service will suggest what it thinks the correct word or phrase is, then set it apart in parentheses.

But I’m not the only fan of Ribbit Mobile transcription.  This comment recently appeared on Twitter:

“Ribbit Mobile converted my distant, un-humanly recognizable voicemail into text w/85% accuracy. I’m impressed!”

If you have to spend more time trying to decipher the transcription than it would take to dial in and listen to the voicemail, then what good is the service?  While Ribbit Mobile isn’t perfect every time, one user describes it as “scary good.”

If the accuracy of your messages matters to you, and if you want to save the time and hassle of dialing into voicemail, then the quality of Ribbit Mobile transcriptions can make all the difference.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Not all voice to text transcriptions are created equal.”

1. Alastair Herbison Says:
   June 24th, 2010 at 5:26 am

   Unfortunately the comment about the voice to text service excelling is not my experience of the service. Here is one of half a dozen or so I saved and I challenge anyone to make sense of this - .
   “1. Alisa, hi. It’s Martin (Gobey?) here. Hey Alisa, could you join the (bridge?) call. I mean test bridge call if running just smoothly. I just need to ask you a question about a bandwidth value that (ones?) people are sending to (??) forwarding to fax which the teams are on under call just know discussing. They can’t seem to (??) report this bandwidths value should be. I think one’s (??) possibly send it vital and (??) center should be higher than deed of record (??) value. I sent you an email and can you have a look at that email, I should have the call details some with on it or just get enough back. Okay. Cheers. Namaste. Bye.”

2. Lee Says:
   June 24th, 2010 at 5:32 am

   Have to agree with the other comment here. My experience of late has also not been positive. The line in the article which says “If you have to spend more time trying to decipher the transcription than it would take to dial in and listen to the voicemail, then what good is the service?” has it the nail on the head, only that it does take me longer to decipher many of the messages than it would to just call my voicemail. For a while I thought it was just me but many of my colleagues are telling me the same thing and the feeling on the street is that the service is ‘getting worse’. I have been keeping faith with the service thinking that it will improve and its early days yet but I have to agree that it doesn’t seem to be improving. Please sort it out Ribbitt!