MacSpeech - Case study of a PR & Product Disaster
Technology early adoption comes at a price – especially if the company releases a substandard product to begin with! Read how technology company MacSpeech ruined a marketing opportunity
Technology early adoption comes at a price – especially if the company releases a substandard product to begin with!
Being a technology guru and avid supporter of technology to improve our productivity and lifestyle, we were pleasantly surprised to find a program for voice recognition on the Macintosh called MacSpeech Dictate. In fact it won Macworld 2008 Best of Show.
Speech recognition software programs have been developed for a number of years. Speech recognition, which is also known as automatic speech recognition or computer speech recognition, converts spoken words into a machine-readable input on a computer.
The application of reliable and accurate speech recognition software for commercial uses is a high demand area. At present high quality speech recognition programs are used in military uses; fighter jets, helicopters, battle command stations etc and there is a high demand in commercial healthcare, business, telecommunications and financial services industries.
So where does the individual fit into these segments? For PC users the industry leader is a company that has been engineering speech recognition software following the acquisition of Dragon Software. Their products called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 are available for personal or professional use.
We have tested Dragon Naturally Speaking and, even though we speak with an Australian accent, the program has problems recognizing words, sentences and punctuation.
In addition, being in Singapore there is no return or refund policy whatsoever we will not risk buying the more expensive professional model to “see if it works”.
Our interest was piqued when MacSpeech Dictate came along because it uses the Dragon Naturally Speaking Professional Engine and an interface for the Macintosh user.
MacSpeech released their new product on February 15, 2008. However, the product CD was faulty and no one could install the product. Not only this, the company failed to provide fast support to customers. Emails went unanswered. There was no on-line support. The only sounds were waves of customers (who had paid US$199 each) who inundated the company websites with their comments and vocal outrage at the MacSpeech failure to successfully launch a new product.
Not only this, but what has MacSpeech done to their distribution and partner network who have also been subjected to customer complaint and have had to accept and placate those customers?
MacSpeech has received some positive reviews from users who were able to get the product working and also obtained the corrected CD’s. No doubt in time, new enhancements may be released. But based on their present performance we have to say – avoid.
However, this is not the point. The clear issue here is a company that has released a Beta product prematurely and have caused damage to their brand, the industry, their partners and, most importantly, alienated customers.
Quite clearly this is an engineering company under the management of a speech recognition expert, Andy Taylor and other technologists. In fact, we looked at their website and there are no marketing VPs, no dedicated sales VPs and no where to contact PR or distribution.
MacSpeech sounds like a great product but walking the talk is one thing, delivery is another.
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Visit Amazon to purchase (if you’re game) and reviews:
Problems with installation AND little support from the company (Amended review), March 29, 2008
By John Kitchens “electronics and fitness fan” (Lexington, KY)
I hate to echo the sentiments of other posts, but it is important to get the point across that this software IS NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME. As with other posts, when I got to the “establish a profile” area, the software crashes. I tried it on 2 other machines (all Intel Macs) with similar results. After multiple attempts at contacting product support (no returned e-mails and hour long waits on hold), I was able to speak to an unhelpful support person. He said that they were having “tons of problems with installation profiles” and that they still did not understand what was causing the crash. He then sent me an e-mail with various “logs” to be sent back to them.
Do not buy this product until they have released version 1.1 or 1.2 to fix these problems. Even then, I would seriously consider not purchasing from a company that does not release the fact that they are having an epidemic of problems with this software, does not return e-mails, and has excessive wait times for customer service.
Amended review:
I was finally able to obtain a new data disk from MacSpeech. Although their customer service was terrible, I must say that they are pretty good as far as their dictation software is concerned. Having used Dragon since version 7.0, MacSpeech Dictate is by far the best voice recognition software I’ve ever used. The recognition is well above 99% in my experience. Probably the best aspect of this software is the ability to import terminology and have it recognized without having to actually train the terms into the program.
MacSpeech certainly needs to improve their customer support (shorter wait times on hold, better communication with customers, and support forums), their product is certainly quite good and worth the wait (and the tremendous hassle to obtain a functional data disk).
I must amend my review from one star to four stars. The only reason I withhold a five star review is because of the aforementioned customer support issues. *Please note that I have dictated his entire review using MacSpeech dictate.
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If no stars were an option, this would rate it, April 5, 2008
By Obiburner “obiburner” (Bend, OR United States)
Warning, the company selling this product is aware they have problems, major problems, which they’ve hidden on a web page of course, away from all of their positive accolades: “Our disc duplicator recently notified us that Data Discs may demonstrate a higher than normal failure rate for discs produced prior to March 20, 2008. The cause of this issue has been corrected. However, anyone experiencing difficulty mounting or using the data disc, or if the disc when mounted is not named “MacSpeech English Data,” should contact MacSpeech, Inc. technical support for a replacement. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.”
Now, this is a problem that could be easily corrected by one: Marking boxes made after that date, and informing Apple store representatives that a problem exists, and if your box doesn’t have an updated sticker, chances are it won’t work. Of course, that would be considerate and would drive down sales. So no, that won’t happen.
Next, they could offer a download of the disk as an image accessible only by entering your serial number so as to reduce piracy. Cheap, easy, no long delays, no frustrated users, no over worked “service” reps, (hey, service, that is what they hire these poor folks for right, solving your problem within minutes of placing your call? Or is that just a TV advertising myth? ) no long waits in a phone que, just low easy problem solving.
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Not Ready For Prime Time, March 27, 2008
By MacUser “docsarah” (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
I agree with other posters here. As a long time user of Dragon Naturally Speaking, I was thrilled when a voice dictation product using the Dragon engine became available for the Mac. I received my disks 3 weeks ago and installation was fine. unfortunately, the program crashed repeatedly when trying to create a profile. Calls and emails to MacSpeech resulted in no solutions. Today, I found several forums with numerous angry customers with the same crashing problem and frustration with lack of support from MacSpeech. It turns out that there is a bad batch of DVD data disks. Instead of publicly acknowledging the problem and offering a disk replacment/download, the MacSpeech support site has been down for at least 2 weeks.
I can’t comment on how the program otherwise functions, as I can’t get past the profile creation step. i understand from other posters that the copy/paste and word correction functions are clunky and/or non-existent
My advice: don’t buy Dictate until it is much more mature! It is clearly a beta product at present.
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HORRIBLE PROGRAM — DO NOT BUY IT, April 10, 2008
By Busichio
I am a former TV reporter, with very clear diction, and the program did not understand my voice. Even when I spelled out words letter by letter, it would misinterpret what I said.
I returned the product in a NY second (for a full refund). Moreover, any attempt to obtain information from the company about bugs or upgrades were futile.
File this under the category of “Never buy Version 1.0 of anything.”
This product should never have been released. They must have displayed a souped-up version at MacWorld.
Tags: Amazon.com, Macspeech software review, review, software recognition, warnings
June 24th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Horrible customer service, absolutely do not purchase any Macspeech product, I made that mistake and it has not worked from day one. My calls to Macspeech have been met with “we charge $1 to set up an claim”??? “fax us the purchase receipt” even though it was registered online already, “take it back to the retailer” its their problem, “send the defective parts to the manufacturer” its their problem, “we are a small company” ??? Obviously they are small, how will they grow if they continue to provide such poor customer service. As a matter of fact, “poor customer service” would be a step up, they provide no customer service, simply take your money and ignore you till you go away.