Patent ID: 8457970

Claim:
A voice portal hosting system, allowing a plurality of users to establish a connection with said system using voice equipment for interacting with one or more of a plurality of service providers for ordering a product and/or service, said system comprising: means for independently uploading a plurality of interactive voice response applications from said service providers, to said system, via a communication channel in advance of ordering products or services using the system, each of said voice response applications for providing interactive voice response functionality for a corresponding one of said service providers when executed by said hosting system, wherein said interactive voice response applications include an executable component for execution by said hosting system, said executable component comprising at least one of an executable file, a Java Bean, a Corba-component, a compiled software module, and a pre-compiled software module; means for storing said plurality of interactive voice response applications; a common speech recognition module; means for storing a plurality of user-specific speech models and a plurality of language models adapted to specific users for use by the common speech recognition module, wherein the plurality of language models is updated for each specific user and service access; a user identification module for identifying a user calling said system via another communication channel; means for retrieving the user-specific speech model of the identified user from said plurality of models, wherein the identified user interacts with one or more of said interactive voice response applications, and wherein said one or more interactive voice response applications utilize said retrieved user-specific speech model via said common speech recognition module for recognizing speech of the identified user, and further wherein said common speech models are adaptable during dialogue between said users and any of said interactive voice response applications during ordering of products and/or services from the corresponding providers such that said adapted speech models are thereafter utilized by others of said voice response applications for ordering products and/or services of the corresponding other providers.