reQall Redux
By 
As I have written previously, I have been going back and forth between Jott and reQall trying to figure out which one better suits my needs.
Both are currently free services. Both offer quick transcription of voice notes. Both offer free iPhone-resident apps. The similarities are numerous and both work quite well. Both integrate with numerous other calendar and task programs in various ways.
There are differences as well. reQall offers 30 seconds of recording time per note- twice the amount of Jott’s 15 seconds. reQall’s system recognizes key words in order to sort whether something is note, a task or part of a shopping list. Similarly, when creating tasks and reminders it can recognize dates and times. Jott doesn’t (it will input specific information but in a more selective way). As a result, Jott is more focused on straight transcription while reQall is a complete task and note system.
I am a big fan of both but, since I really only need the transcription ability, I have been back to using Jott for the past few weeks.
reQall released an updated version of their software the other night, however. Between the new software and an e-mail conversation I had with Wayne Schulz from Gear Diary about the pros and cons of Jott and reQall, I decided to give reQall yet another look the other night.
Unfortunately things didn’t go all that well- at first. Yes, I was able to record a voice note and have it transcribed, but each time the iPhone app tried to sync with reQall’s servers in order to pull the transcription back, it returned an error message. I emailed reQall’s support team and within a few hours they responded. They made some suggestions and I promptly tried all of them. None fixed the situation. I still got the same error message each time I tried to sync.
I emailed reQall again and, within a few hours, I received another e-mail. This time however, it wasn’t from reQall support team. This time the e-mail came directly from Deb Miller, the Vice President of Products for reQall. Deb asked what the issue was and offered to help to figure out how to resolve it as quickly as possible. We tried a few more things to get it fixed but that didn’t work either. The third time I heard from Deb it was to tell me that she had just been in contact with Sunil Vemuri, reQall’s co-founder and "chief brain" and that he was going to personally look into it for me. I have to say I was more than blown away.
I woke up this morning and discovered that reQall now works perfectly! A short while later I received another email from Deb explaining what the issue was and asking if everything worked properly now. Great product, great service, clear open communication- WOW!
Aside- While all of this was taking place I also emailed the support team to ask a few questions about the format of the actual transcriptions. Independent of Deb and her team, they too responded within hours. In a world of horrible customer service it is amazing to find a company where that is anything but the case- especially an app that is currently free!
The people at reQall were terrific about trying to get things working for me. Now that they have done their magic, reQall is nothing short of amazing. The fact that it records a full 30 seconds and the actual transcription is close to perfect, is reason enough for me to be using it now. Next step will be to learn how to have reQall integrate with my calendar.
Are you using reQall? If so, how would you change it? What additional features would you like to see?
