Apologies for the long winded post title, but recently I have been amazed by astounding bits of simple technology out there that have made a huge difference in my work day. I’m talking about things, that when I first heard them, I thought “Yeah, whatever!” and never bothered to follow up on.
Let me give you a specific example. About 3 months ago, I was contacted by Trudi, my local rep at our telco provider Telstra, who told me about a new service that they were launching on their mobile services called Voice2Text, which basically was an automatic service which converted your voicemail messages to an SMS. I must admit, that when I first heard about it, I thought “Yeah, whatever!”…as if such things were going to improve my life. Surely it was a gimmick and nothing more?
But there was no dissuading Trudi, she was well and truly on the war sales path. My ears finally perked up when she mentioned she could give me a 30 day trial on the service to see how I liked it. Sure, I said. Couldn’t hurt.
Now, 3 months later, you will have to prise this service out of my cold, dead hands.
Simple as that. What I should explain is that my mobile phone is pretty much my lifeline with my client base – a lot of them (and I mean a lot, probably too many) use it as the single point of contact with me. Now, the nature of my work means that I am often doing work with a client on site, or else locked in my cave programming some arcane system for them and cannot really be disturbed. At these times, I leave my mobile phone off or on silent ring to alleviate any intrusions on my concentration.
All well and good, but I didn’t realise how much I used to dread checking my voicemails, finding a pencil to jot numbers and other details down, and generally spending time listening to long, rambly messages. Not that any of my clients ramble on – at least, not those that read this blog! 
Now, within a couple of minutes of my phone ringing and a voicemail being left, I get a nice little SMS with a text translation transcript of their message. I am truly amazed at how accurate the transcript is. There are only ever a few words here and there which don’t come across correctly, and these are mainly people or company names which are really out of the ordinary. Another bonus on my Treo, is that anything that looks or sounds like a phone number in the SMS is automatically converted into a hyperlink that I can click on to immediately dial the number. No more scratching around for a pencil and paper or trying to remember long numbers!
This now means I can have my phone on silent during a meeting or seminar, and then every few minutes or during a break I can quickly scan my text messages for any new voicemails, and choose to respond or not right there and then. Compare this to dialing my voicemail box, listening to a string of messages etc. whilst sitting at a meeting table (not polite!) to just quickly glancing down at my SMS inbox discreetly – there is no comparison.
Also, with SMS’s, I can forward them to other team member phones or Inboxes to deal with if need be. All in all, this little piece of technology is one of those amazing little things that I didn’t know I couldn’t live without.
Note: I am not getting any commissions, discounts or kickbacks from Telstra for this post. As with everything on this blog, there are no hidden strings attached. I simply report on things that I find helpful or unhelpful to my business in the hope that it can improve your business.
Telstra’s Voice2Text service costs from 55 cents down to 25 cents per transcribed voicemail, depending on the monthly plan you are on. More information can be found on their website.
Recent Comments