On Wed, 30 Sep 2009, Ritesh A wrote:
Thanks for the insights. I just tried out Twilio's Speech to Text API and
played the same message as Yext Demo. It worked out pretty well so I am very
impressed. It's likely that Twilio uses SpinVox in the back-end anyway.. By
the way, I think Yext records the call and sends the recorded file for
transcription. This saves the hassle of mixing and transcribing two
different audio files.
Yes, Yext has a fairly impressive solution indeed and I could think of so
many applications that are vertical specific (e.g. Automotive). I could
imagine Yext building a lot of library relevant to each category (e.g.
Doctor, Mechanic, Finance etc) and then doing a close/guess association of
the returned text to white/blacklist certain terms and then splitting them
into different sub-categories (e.g. Year built, Make/Model etc). This is
hard work (hence barrier to entry) and they seem to have raised $17M in
recent round in addition to running a (self asserted) $20M and growing
business. Hard to play the catch up game...
It's clear that they are doing a good job of focusing their efforts on 12
of the 2300 Yellow Pages categories, making sure they are very good with
the first 12 or so before expanding. I'm sure a lot of work went into the
lead generation logic.
Don't try to catch up. Figure out how to offer something that offers a
slightly different model than Yext. Find customers that like the idea of
Yext, but don't like something about it, then build it for them. Search
the forums/web for weaknesses in Yext's offerings, then fill in that gap.
Another interesting fact is that Yext solution would improve with time much
like wine. Given the call/customer flow and lack of competition, Yext could
continue to improve the keyword filtering and categorizing over time
creating a fairly accurate solution.
Evolution can be good for business. They are providing a valuable
service to small local businesses. I'm personally interested in using
their service as a way to track calls to the office more than lead
generation, which it sounds like they realize and are planning.
Beckman
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