SpinVox's James Whatley set the record straight

On his first day back, James Whatley at SpinVox has been hard at it by all accounts.

I just caught the blog post a moment ago here. It’s pretty extensive and — as I thought he might — James has tackled the issues head on.

I don’t know why SpinVox couldn’t have done this last week.

On, then, to the good news.

We’ve got clarity from Mr Whatley.

I zoomed along his blog post to see what he had to say.

I was, like many, hunting for that figure — the answer to the ‘X percent of messages are referred to humans’ point — and whilst James does indeed deal with the issue, he politely refuses an answer, citing commercial interest. Well, I am ok with that.

Here’s the relevant paragraph:

4) “How many messages are referred — in any way — to human operators during the transcription process?”

Well I’ll be honest with you folks, I’ve been wrestling away with this one most of today. I wish I could tell you, really I could. But this information is so business critical to our operation that we simply cannot share it.

I’m not kidding when I say that it would be the equivalent of Coca-Cola publishing their exact recipe up on their own blog.

This question sprang up from the mysteriously panicked behaviour of the central management team. Filled with doubt, I felt I wanted — nay, needed — an answer to it.

That said, if it’s commercially sensitive, so be it. I don’t necessarily agree with this — given the shenanigans of the past few days but I understand that the company has a right to decide what it defines as commercial interest.

I’m surprised how positively I feel about the company once again after reading James’ post. I feel the lights are on.

What do you think? What’s your position on SpinVox in the light of this news?