The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice

Many applications include lists of information through which callers need to navigate, such as lists of voice mail messages, rental car choices, airline flights , and so on. To ensure a positive ”and quick ”experience for callers , it's important to provide them with easy list management directions.

Before informing callers about how to handle list navigation, the system must first tell them:

• That there is a list

• How many items are on it

• And how the system has arranged these items

For example, when Wildfire users call in to check their voice mail or e-mail messages, the system first tells them how many new messages there are, and how it has ordered them: "OK, I've found 15 unread messages and I've ordered them newest first." The nice thing about this method is that the caller can sort them, and then specify the type of sort : "Oldest first," "By priority," "By sender," or even "The other way."