One of the most-touted features of Google Voice is its purported ability to transcribe voicemail, allowing users to funnel all their inbound communication into their email inbox. The technology is unproven; voice recognition software is infamously unreliable. But one Web company, PhoneTag, is already doing voicemail transcription–and not only that, they’re charging a monthly fee. What can Google bring to the market that PhoneTag can’t?
PhoneTag works like this: set up your account with any phone on any carrier, and all your voicemails will be transcribed and sent to your email inbox. It doesn’t delete or alter the voicemails themselves, so you can always go back and listen if you need to. For that privilege, you pay either per message ($0.95), in batches of 40 messages ($10, plus more for each additional message), or for an unlimited account, which is $30 a month. (Most of us probably average more than one voicemail a day, so the only real viable plan is the unlimited one.)
PhoneTag has a few proprietary advantages: it’ll email you an audio file of the voicemail so you don’t have to dial in, and it also works with your Skype account, so it can transcribe those voicemails, too. You can also trade up to PhoneTag’s corporate service if you think the rest of your team might benefit from the technology.
But PhoneTag’s major weakness is that it still relies upon your existing phone number. That might not seem like such a liability at first, but consider what PhoneTag does: it turns your phone number into another conduit for your email. Most people are sparing when it comes to divulging their real phone number, but begin treating it like an email address, and you find yourself more profligate. Suddenly, you’re getting more calls and voicemails than you ever meant to, which then translates into more email traffic. Sure, it probably won’t create more work for you, but it will give you the impression that you’re being inundated.
As a GrandCentral user, I got my faux phone number–GC lets you pick an area code and generates one for free–about a year ago. I stuck it on my business card, and set it up to ring my cell and office phone, and used GC’s Web interface to listen to my voicemails. Six months later, my cell phone was dying every six hours from the call volume, and my office phone was disrupting everyone within a three-desk radius. Figuring that GC could help me screen and filter, I didn’t just give out my work email address to contacts, as I used to–I went ahead and gave them my number, too. I didn’t have any more stories to write–I’m a journalist–or any more sources to interview. But it felt like I was working at the White House press office. Alone.
PhoneTag’s other liability is naturally its monthly cost, but that fee does get you something that Google surely won’t provide: a customer service hotline. Phone communication, especially customer service-related, is anathema to Google, but they might have to rethink that strategy now that millions will soon be depending on Google Voice to handle their phone traffic. After all, they’re running a telephony service, and billing people (at least for long-distance calls); an 800 number would be nice. Hear that, Google?
