Google Voice Gets More Accurate Voicemail Transcriptions

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.

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"Many thanks to the Google Voice users who shared their voicemails, they really helped us make the product better," Danko wrote. "While this is a big improvement, it is just the beginning and with your input, we will continue improving voicemail transcriptions over time."

Meanwhile, if you're not using Google Voice but want to give it a try, you can sign up for an account online. If you don't want a new Google number, you can still get some of the same benefits with a Voice Lite account, which lets users save voicemails, get voicemail transcriptions, and more.