Patent ID: 6665644
Filing Date: 2003-12-16
Classification: G10L,H04M

Abstract:
A method for collecting, in a data warehouse, data associated with a voice of a voice system user, said method comprising the steps of:(a) conducting a conversation with the voice system user via at least one of a human operator and a voice-enabled machine system; (b) capturing a speech waveform associated with utterances spoken by the voice system user during said conversation; (c) digitizing said speech waveform to provide a digitized speech waveform; (d) extracting, from said digitized speech waveform, at least one acoustic feature which is correlated with at least one user attribute, said at least one user attribute including at least one of: (d-1) gender of the user; (d-2) age of the user; (d-3) accent of the user; (d-4) native language of the user; (d-5) dialect of the user; (d-6) socioeconomic classification of the user; (d-7) educational level of the user; and (d-8) emotional state of the user; (e) storing attribute data corresponding to said acoustic feature which is correlated with said at least one user attribute, together with at least one identifying indicia, in the data warehouse in a form to facilitate subsequent data mining thereon; (f) repeating steps (a)-(e) for a plurality of additional conversations, with additional users, to provide a collection of stored data including the attribute data and identifying indicia; and (g) mining the collection of stored data to provide information for modifying underlying business logic of the voice system.