Ditech Networks’ (News - Alert) PhoneTag Auto achieved the highest accuracy in automated voicemail transcription, based upon a study released today by TMA Associates.
The study was partly supported by Ditech.
Explaining the popularity of the service, James Siminoff (News - Alert) , founder and CEO of PhoneTag, said that the general consensus is that people like e-mail.
“It's much more efficient than talking on the phone. There just isn't enough time in the day, sadly, to talk to everyone on the phone,” he added.
With 86 percent word accuracy, TMA officials said, the independently-scored study found that PhoneTag Auto is the most accurate, 100 percent automated voicemail transcription product among those surveyed.
Microsoft (News - Alert) and Google’s voicemail transcription solutions ranked second and third, respectively. A fourth company in the study, Yap, achieved 78 percent accuracy.
In November, Ditech Networks announced that Mutare Software selected its flagship automated voicemail-to-text solution PhoneTag to provide voicemail transcription services to the company’s business users.
Speech recognition expert Bill Meisel, head of TMA Associates and editor of Speech Strategy News, conducted a study recently of the accuracy of fully automated voicemail transcription services, using an objective test methodology to establish his results to prevent subjective opinion from impacting the findings.
With IVR applications, TMA officials explained that each percentage point of accuracy can have a dramatic impact on usability and perceived quality.
“For example, in automated billing and airline booking IVR accuracy is very important, and companies can spend years to improve their solutions by a percentage point or two,” company officials said.
Specific accuracy numbers are included in the report. “We used the same 500 test voicemail messages, with a variety of different speakers, for each service to measure accuracy,” Meisel said.
In 2008, PhoneTag reported that the company, formerly known as SimulScribe (News - Alert), was an excellent fit for users because the company offers one of the few truly accurate voicemail-to-text transcription services available, and perhaps the only such service with the ideal mixture of flexibility, affordability and simplicity.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Kelly McGuire