Pibbix - sets a new standard for voice to text voicemail conversion

Last week the team at Pibbix kindly sent me an invitation for the beta of their new Pibbix Voicemail service. For those of you who used SpinVox or if you're in the United States, Google Voice, you'll be familiar with the concept of receiving your voicemails as text messages and/or emails. This concept provides a text transcription of the message and avoids having to dial in to listen to messages. Over the past couple of years I've become very used to receiving my voicemails as texts and can't imagine having to dial in to pick them up again.

Pibbix has taken the same concept but looked at what it needs to do to be a business grade service. One of the problems with SpinVox was the variable quality of the speech conversion. I could usually get the gist of the message but the detail often eluded me. Pibbix uses a combination of automation and human conversion to deliver top quality transcriptions. The message transcriptions I've received over the past few days have been spot on - better than I was expecting.

Price transparency is another key feature and launch pricing is simple:

• £7.50 for 20 messages converted to text
• £16 for 50 messages converted to text
• £30 for 100 messages converted to text

The Pibbix Voicemail control panel is very clear and allows the user to review received messages, record a personal outgoing message, set how messages should be delivered - SMS, email, MP3 attachment. An example of the thought that has gone into the application is the ability to switch off transcription and SMS alerts for calls from withheld numbers (the message is still delivered as an MP3 attachment). The thinking here is that these calls are often unimportant and users may not want them to be counted against their bundle.

Another feature I like is the ability to link multiple mobile or landline numbers to a single Pibbix Voicemail box. All your messages are in one place and SMS alerts are delivered to your main mobile number.

The Pibbix blog has a good summary of all features and you can request an invitation to the beta here.

Overall I'm very impressed by Pibbix Voicemail. It addresses a gap in the market and will appeal to time pressured business users. I'm looking forward to seeing the next product from Pibbix!

Follow Pibbix on Twitter at @pibbix.