Concept Recognition in Response Point
One of the coolest features of the Response Point automated receptionist is the ability to set pre-recorded announcements that will play when an outside caller asks common questions like "What is your office location?", or "What are your hours?". Unlike other IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems you may have tried, with Response Point you don't have to sp-eeeea-k slooooo-lyyyy or c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y to get the correct greeting. In fact, you can ask your question as naturally as you would to a human, using whatever words you usually use.
Alex Acero is a research area manager in Microsoft Research whose team collaborated with us to build this feature. When I bumped into Alex in our new cafe yesterday, he mentioned he was going to talk about the feature at a speech scientist talk next week and asked if I had any videos that demonstrate it.
So I made the following short demo to show how it works. Let us know what you think:
Remember: you're welcome to test my personal Response Point system 24 hours a day. (Dial 425-881-2170 or click here for more instructions).