Universal commands for telephony-based spoken language systems

Abstract

Many spoken language systems designed for use over the telephone incorporate universal commands. A universal command is one that is available to the caller at all times. Example universals from some currently deployed systems include "help" in order to get additional instruction relevant to the current state of the call, and "repeat" to hear the most recent prompt again. Universal commands provide the caller with consistency throughout an application. They typically provide functions a caller can fall back on any time they are having problems, increasing the ease of use of systems.