Patent ID: 7039166

Claim:
A method of visually representing user behavior within an interactive voice response (IVR) system of a call processing center, in which the IVR system generates user prompts, including a first prompt generated upon entry of a user into the IVR system, and subsequent prompts triggered by data inputted by a user or by internal processing of the IVR system that cause a branching in a call flow within the IVR system, said method comprising the steps of: generating and storing a complete sequence of events within the IVR system for plural calls to the call processing center, the plural calls being recorded from end to end; modeling a call flow of the IVR system as a non-deterministic finite-state machine, such that a start state of the finite-state machine represents a first prompt of the IVR system, other states of the finite-state machine represent subsequent prompts at which a branching occurs in the call flow of the IVR system, exit conditions are represented as end states, and transitions of the finite-state machine represent transitions between call flow states triggered by data inputted by a user or by internal processing of the IVR system; providing the complete sequences of events for the plural calls to the finite-state machine to produce a two-way matrix of several counters, such that: for states with at least one child or subsequent state, there are provided state-transition counters, and for exit states, there are provided counters representing exit conditions from the IVR system, separating different levels of automation achieved; and visually representing data from the two-way matrix as a state-transition diagram having states representing IVR system prompts and arcs representing user responses to the prompts or actions initiated by the IVR system.