A method, comprising: receiving, from a first device, first audio or text data representing a first user input; determining an error condition in response to the first user input; identifying and ranking a plurality of techniques for recovering from the error condition through a conversation with a user, the plurality of techniques comprising: (i) causing the user to repeat the first user input and (ii) a topic switching technique comprising selecting a topic based at least in part on at least one of system usage data or user profile data, wherein: causing the user to repeat the first user input is associated with first criteria, the topic switching technique is associated with second criteria, and the ranking is determined based at least in part on whether the first criteria and the second criteria are satisfied; determining, following the ranking, when either not all the first criteria are satisfied or when the topic switching technique is the top ranked technique from all the conversation recovering techniques that the topic switching technique is to be used to recommend a topic to the user to recover from the error condition and generating second audio or text data representing a topic selected based on at least one of first system usage data or first user profile data; and sending the second data to the first device. receiving, from a first device, first audio or text data representing a first user input; determining an error condition in response to the first user input; identifying and ranking a plurality of techniques for recovering from the error condition through a conversation with a user, the plurality of techniques comprising: (i) causing the user to repeat the first user input and (ii) a topic switching technique comprising selecting a topic based at least in part on at least one of system usage data or user profile data, wherein: causing the user to repeat the first user input is associated with first criteria, the topic switching technique is associated with second criteria, and the ranking is determined based at least in part on whether the first criteria and the second criteria are satisfied; determining, following the ranking, when either not all the first criteria are satisfied or when the topic switching technique is the top ranked technique from all the conversation recovering techniques that the topic switching technique is to be used to recommend a topic to the user to recover from the error condition and generating second audio or text data representing a topic selected based on at least one of first system usage data or first user profile data; and sending the second data to the first device. causing the user to repeat the first user input is associated with first criteria, the topic switching technique is associated with second criteria, and the ranking is determined based at least in part on whether the first criteria and the second criteria are satisfied; determining, following the ranking, when either not all the first criteria are satisfied or when the topic switching technique is the top ranked technique from all the conversation recovering techniques that the topic switching technique is to be used to recommend a topic to the user to recover from the error condition and generating second audio or text data representing a topic selected based on at least one of first system usage data or first user profile data; and sending the second data to the first device.