Messaging

E-Mail by Phone

Audiopoint has released version 2.0 of its Voice Terminal Service, allowing subscribers to interact with the e-mail inboxes by phone.

by ISP-Planet Staff [February 13, 2003]

Audiopoint released version 2.0 of its Voice Terminal Service (VTS). It's a surprise turnaround for a company that nearly went out of business.

"Audiopoint was started in 1999," says Brian Lichrowic, Audiopoint CEO, "and it received $12 million of funding before the end of 1999. But it burned through the money in eight months developing impressive technology. I was brought in to shut the company down. I saw that we had a good product and could take on a niche market, so we chose e-mail by phone. Now we have revenue and have cut our cash burn and are looking to be cash positive by the end of March or early April."

The e-mail by phone market was attractive because it was not dominated by one or a few applications. Other areas of the Internet are dominated by a few or even one app, such as e-mail (Eudora, Outlook), browsers (Netscape, IE), and instant messaging (AIM, with a few rivals).

Although the company is selling services directly to customers, it is interested in making deals with ISPs. Selling through an ISP lowers marketing costs, and has other intangible benefits as well. "Consumers trust their ISPs, especially when the contact level is high," notes Lichrowic.

The service offers the following features:

• Listen to e-mail directly from an existing e-mail inbox
• Delete and skip messages with voice commands
• Filter by name and date to sort e-mail
• Personal address book
• Preferences allow user to choose to receive a phone call when a specific message arrives
• Touch tone command options for when background noise makes voice recognition system unusable

Audiopoint is deploying its services at several very large ISPs, including SingTel and Earthlink.

In order to ease integration with an ISP's mail servers, the company's product creates a copy of each user's in box in a separate set of servers. "We can poll the e-mail server every ten minutes or so," says Lichrowic, "or we can poll the server when the user asks us to. Cell phone companies prefer the latter, because it takes a minute or two to poll the servers, and the companies like their subscribers to use up minutes."

Setting up the service costs about $20,000 to $25,000, with ongoing costs depending on the ISP's expertise. "We've tailored each deal for each sale," explains Lichrowic. One of his smallest customers serves doctors in a rural U.S. state. "Those doctors are burning up they phone lines. The more money the ISP makes, the more money we make," Lichrowic enthuses.

He claims that his company's software is the only e-mail by phone software that allows users to originate e-mail, instead of just reply to it.

The company is furiously adding features as it talks to current and prospective customers. It plans to integrate with address books and even portal systems for sales force automation.

Even as the service changes, users are learning about the basic services. "People are just starting to realize they can issue voice commands on pickup and not wait for the end of the message," Lichrowic says.

The market for Internet voice services has a great potential for both success and failure. ISPs will need to tread carefully as they search for services their customers will buy, but if they find those services, they can reduce churn and increase revenue—which is every ISP's goal.

— End