The voicemail transcriptions that Google Voice does are… less than accurate, but at least Google acknowledges this and has put some effort into fixing the issue. The company recently launched an initiative to help solve the problem by asking users to share some of their voicemails and teach Google Voice hot to not suck. The results have actually been pretty damn good, with Google reporting that transcription errors have been reduced by almost 50%.
Good news, Google Voice users: Voicemail transcriptions are getting an upgrade. “You may have been there before,” Google Software Engineer Zander Danko wrote in a blog post. “Open your voicemail transcriptions in Google Voice to find that at times they aren’t completely intelligible. Or, they are humorously intelligible. “Either way, they might not have been the message the caller meant to leave you,” he said. Fortunately, this should be less of an issue now. Google recently asked Voice users to share some of their voicemails for research and system improvements. After analyzing the problem and making some tweaks, Google said it was able to cut transcription errors by 49 percent. The Web giant has already rolled out these changes to Google Voice users, as well as those on the new Project Fi network. Current users don’t need to do a thing to start receiving the improved voicemail transcriptions — just continue to use Google Voice as you have been.
