MOBILE phones have undoubtedly revolutionised modern life, but do you ever find yourself considering voicemail to be an artefact left over from the Dark Ages? While many of us are grateful for never missing a call, fumbling for a pen and paper to transcribe messages often turns a time-saving convenience into a tedious and protracted process.
Two years ago, Christina Domecq, a 28-year-old scion of the Spanish sherry family, came up with a solution. “It was a very busy day and as I drove from one meeting to the next, I checked my mobile’s voicemail and I had 14 messages,” she recalls. “I had to pull over and write them down. It made me wonder why voicemail was so difficult and unnecessarily time-consuming.”
Ms Domecq called Daniel Doulton, a tech-savvy friend, to find out if something existed to sort out her problem. When he told her that there was nothing available, a seemingly simple solution dawned.
“I thought, why not receive voicemail as text messages? The answer seemed so simple, I could not understand why no one had thought of it before.”
Having launched and grown businesses in New York and Spain, Ms Domecq started SpinVox, her voice-over-text service, in October last year. Using a voice-recognition system, SpinVox converts voicemails into text messages direct to a handset or e-mail, provided that users’ mobile networks support call diverts.
She says: “It took almost two years — from proof of concept to commercial deployment — to research and develop the specifications.”
Ms Domecq and Mr Doulton chose to launch in the UK because they believed that the British consumer is well educated in mobile phone technology. She says: “The UK is a nation of heavy text-users. While the US has a large mobile phone market, texting is not as popular there.”
With the backing of business angels, SpinVox was launched with established retail partners such as Diageo and Carphone Warehouse, which work as distributors of the product.
People can either sign up on the company’s website or walk into a retailer such as Carphone Warehouse or the Link and sign up for a service contract. “We offer new users a free trial with the service,” Ms Domecq says. “This has proved to be our best form of advertising. More than 80 per cent of users stay with us.”
The service costs £8 to £10 a month for the average contract holder taking five voicemails a day. Users pay directly with the company or through their network operator.
Ms Domecq, who now employs 60 people, has more than 55,000 regular subscribers and is confident that the number will rise to at least 250,000 next year. SpinVox is scheduled to break even in its first year.
“In the next six months we plan to launch in other English-speaking markets and we hope eventually to launch versions in different languages,” she says.
“The best aspect of this voice-to-text service is that it combines everything that you have always loved about voicemail. Users can always listen to the original voice message and feel confident that they will never miss a call.”
- SpinVox: 0870 0337300, www.spinvox.com
