SpinVox Voicemail-to-Text Solution Spreads to Canada
Given the heated competition among wireless service providers, it’s expected that carriers would attempt to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU) through the incorporation of value-added services. With that in mind, Rogers Wireless, Canada’s largest wireless voice and data communications service provider, announced today that it will offer SpinVox’s voicemail-to-text service across its network this fall.
Starting this fall, Rogers subscribers will be able to choose to have all their voicemails converted to text by SpinVox and sent directly to their cell phones as an SMS message. SpinVox sends the SMS along with the number, so the caller can be immediately identified, enabling customers to instantly respond either by text or phone with just one-touch. SpinVox’s service boasts a proprietary system with multilingual capacity. Besides English, the system can also handle French, Spanish, and German.
"SpinVox provides a great tool for road warriors when they cannot listen to their voicemail as the system uses very sophisticated voice-to-text solutions and delivers with great accuracy," said John Boynton, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Rogers Wireless. "With the SpinVox solution, users can receive and read messages while held up in a meeting or on the run and are able to easily document detailed directions and coordinates."
One of the problems in the past with speech recognition systems was their lack of accuracy. And while SpinVox can’t boast 100 percent accuracy, the system shoots for truth in messaging. If the end user can garner what someone is trying to say, then the interaction is considered a success. Still, such problems as ambient noise, dialects, or new lexicons can easily disorient a system, particularly one dealing with 30-second intervals. In such a case, SpinVox’s system signals for a human agent to resolve the dispute, thereby increasing accuracy, even when the system is temporarily confused.
Moreover, SpinVox’s system is constantly being tuned; thus, the longer it is in place and the more unique users it has to process, the greater its accuracy. Ultimately, the deployment of SpinVox by Rogers marks a strong endorsement for an industry beginning to come into its own.
"Data services backed by enhanced communications is a key growth area for carriers in the market today," says Daniel Hong, lead analyst of customer interaction technologies at Datamonitor. "Voicemail-to-text is the next logical extension for text-based services offered by carriers. This announcement is indicative of the growing adoption of this value-added service among North American carriers. We expect more deployments in the future."
The deal with Rogers Wireless marks SpinVox's fourth carrier announcement in North America. The company forecasts a total of 12 announced deals by the end of this year, leading to an estimated global subscriber base of 6 million people by early next year.