GotVoice Adds Talking Bears and Speech-To-Text Transcription

GotVoice is a great voicemail utility that has so far focused on delivering visual voicemail (phone/web), custom voicemail greetings, and broadcasting voice messages (like Pinger). Through some clever coding, GotVoice links directly into your voicemail to pull messages into the system and send messages back out through it. However, the product has been lacking one of the killer voicemail features of their competitors, speech-to-text.

gotvoicescreen.pngToday they’re differentiating themselves from GrandCentral and closing the gap with their other competitors by adding speech-to-text transcription. And adding avatars to boot.

Their new avatar system will let you add some personality to your voicemail playback using SitePal’s avatars. It’s sure to come in handy if for some reason you enjoy getting your messages delivered by a bear.

Their speech-to-text offering allows you to transcribe voicemails to text for delivery via email or SMS. You can transcribe all your messages, or filter by contact. Transcription is available on their $9.99/month premium accounts including 40 messages a month with additional charges for each message thereafter, although they have a 14 free trial.

Spinvox and CallWave also offer call transcription. Spinvox is pricey in the U.S. if you take into account exchange rates, costing £9.99/month for 50 messages. CallWave is currently a good deal, transcribing calls for free during their open beta.