New Services Allow You To Read Your Voicemail

Voicemail is one of those things many people love to hate. Now, instead of missed calls going to your carriers' voicemail service, they can be converted to text or email messages that you read instead of listen to. These voicemail-to-text services will give you a voicemail dial-in number, to manually listen to messages, but the expectation is that you'll only ever use it once to personalize your greeting.

Some services also give you a wav audio version of the email, along with your text summary of the message. These services work very well, and are compatible with several mobile carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Alltel, etc. The better ones transcribe messages with as much as 98% accuracy. Still, voice recognition is more an art than a science, and mistakes can come about when a computer tries to read voicemails and relay them into text.

If you are in a meeting, at a social gathering or in a restaurant, listening to voicemails on a hand-held gadget is impolite, and at the very least, inconvenient. A good voicemail-to-text service will get rid of the hassle of checking voice messages on wireless devices. For the most part services are very easy to use. They also end the hassle of having to jot down names, numbers or addresses.

Voicemail-to-text is easy to sign up for, and most services include an e-mailed page of easily comprehensible directions for configuring your call forwarding settings and voicemail account, and calling to check messages from your own phone or other phones. Some services offer free trials. The audio versions on the .wav files are usually clear, without distortion or static.

This type of service has proved especially popular with people who are hearing impaired, and at least one provider offers the service to such individuals at no charge. Accounting firm Ernst & Young is among several companies that provide the service to their hearing impaired staffers.

Transcribing voice to text is no easy task, and it is done with special computers using sophisticated software. In most cases the software alerts users of possible errors by adding question marks after certain words, especially uncommon names, etc. Before you consider voice to text, think about the privacy issue: while all transcription is done by machine and no human listens to your messages, there is no guarantee that archived messages will remain inaccessible.

The best thing about voicemail to text is that it saves time: scanning your voicemail on a screen is so much easier than listening to each one with the robotic instructions in between. You also choose which voicemails to read, so you can skip the time-wasters. You delete and save, again without having to listen to the robot asking whether that's what you really want to do.

Manhattan-based voicemail-to-text service PhoneTag (formerly SimulScribe) www.TranscribeMyVoicemails.com sends converted messages to a cell phone, Blackberry or email account. The cost is $9.95 per month for up to 40 messages or $29.95 a month for unlimited messages. Other corporations offering voicemail to text services include SpinVox, based in England, GotVoice, with its head office in Kirkland, Washington, Callwave, based in Santa Barbara, CA, and YouMail, based in Aliso Viejo, CA.