Abstract: The present invention includes a method and software application for providing a promotion to a user on a phone. The software application resides on a user's phone and “listens” for phone numbers dialed by a user. In response to the user dialing a phone number, the software determines whether a promotion or an offer for a promotion should be provided to the user. In response to determining to play or offer to play a promotion to the user, the software application on the phone effectively “intercepts” the call and plays to the user either a promotion or an offer to hear about a promotion prior to placing an outbound voice call. The software application may retrieve the promotion from local memory or may connect with a remote server to download an applicable promotion.

Abstract: A system and method commoditize browsing time in a self-service store for a communication carrier. The method comprises communicating with a user, enabling the user to browse the store, tracking the amount of time the user spends browsing the store, calculating a charge, if any, for the amount of time the user spent browsing the store, and, if a charge is incurred, charging the user's account for such charge. In one embodiment, the self-service store is a voice store in which a user calls into the store. However, the invention is not limited to voice stores, and the invention could apply to stores accessed via text messaging, the web, etc. Communication with a user can be initiated by the user or by the self-service system.

Abstract: A system, method and computer program product are provided for handling unregistered callers in a voice recognition framework. Initially, it is determined whether a user is registered. If it is determined that the user is not registered, a registration process is executed. Once registered, utterances may be received from the user and recognized for the purpose of providing a service to the user.

Abstract: A method and software application reduce the occurrence of misdirected calls to one or more select destinations The software application resides on a user's phone and “listens” to phone numbers dialed by a user to determine if the user has dialed a phone number for one of such select destinations. In response to the user dialing one of such phone numbers, the software application on the phone effectively “intercepts” the call and enables the phone to provide the user with a list of destination options prior to placing the call to the dialed phone number. In one embodiment, the list is provided in audio form by playing a voice prompt with the list, as well as in visual form by displaying the list in the user interface of the user's phone. The list helps disambiguate the intent of the user in dialing the phone number by asking the user to either (i) confirm he wants the destination associated with the phone number or (ii) select another option.

Abstract: An automated method for determining user satisfaction with a call comprising (1) maintaining a count of the number of times a user was asked for input during the call (the “actual count”), (2) maintaining a count of the number of times a user should have been asked for input based on the dialog path the user traversed (the “ideal count”), and (3) associating no difference between the actual count and the ideal count with maximum user satisfaction and associating increasing differences between the counts with decreasing user satisfaction. In one embodiment, if the difference between the actual count and ideal count reaches a certain threshold, the call system changes the interaction with the user.

Abstract: A system, method and computer program product are provided for collecting information utilizing speech recognition. After receiving a specification, a voice application is configured based on the specification. During use, the voice application is capable of collecting information utilizing speech recognition.