Method and system for creating natural language understanding grammars
First Claim
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1. A system comprising:
- a) an input connection, wherein said input connection is operable to receive a natural language input from a user;
b) a computer readable medium, said computer readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of grammars, wherein said plurality of grammars is organized according to a hierarchy comprising five levels, wherein;
i) a grammar from the lowest of the five levels comprises a vocabulary comprising words corresponding to natural language statements; and
ii) for each level above the lowest level in the hierarchy, each grammar from that level comprises one or more elements provided by a grammar from the next lower level in the hierarchy;
c) a computer, said computer configured with a set of computer executable instructions operable to, during an interaction with the user, cause the computer to perform a set of acts comprising;
i) based on the natural language input from the user, determine a goal for the user;
ii) determine a set of information necessary for the user to provide for the goal to be completed, wherein determining the set of information is performed using a first grammar from said plurality of grammars;
iii) determine a set of missing information from the set of information, wherein the set of missing information comprises information which has not been provided by the user during the interaction;
iv) based on a second grammar from the plurality of grammars, determine a prompt to provide to said user to obtain one or more elements from said set of missing information; and
v) provide said prompt to said user.
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Abstract
Grammars for interactive voice response systems using natural language understanding can be created using information which is available on websites. These grammars can be created in automated manners and can have various tuning measures applied to obtain optimal results when deployed in a customer contact environment. These grammars can allow a variety of statements to be appropriately handled by the system.
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Citations
15 Claims
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1. A system comprising:
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a) an input connection, wherein said input connection is operable to receive a natural language input from a user; b) a computer readable medium, said computer readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of grammars, wherein said plurality of grammars is organized according to a hierarchy comprising five levels, wherein; i) a grammar from the lowest of the five levels comprises a vocabulary comprising words corresponding to natural language statements; and ii) for each level above the lowest level in the hierarchy, each grammar from that level comprises one or more elements provided by a grammar from the next lower level in the hierarchy; c) a computer, said computer configured with a set of computer executable instructions operable to, during an interaction with the user, cause the computer to perform a set of acts comprising; i) based on the natural language input from the user, determine a goal for the user; ii) determine a set of information necessary for the user to provide for the goal to be completed, wherein determining the set of information is performed using a first grammar from said plurality of grammars; iii) determine a set of missing information from the set of information, wherein the set of missing information comprises information which has not been provided by the user during the interaction; iv) based on a second grammar from the plurality of grammars, determine a prompt to provide to said user to obtain one or more elements from said set of missing information; and v) provide said prompt to said user. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A method comprising:
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a) receiving, at a first computer, a first set of input data related to the completion of a transaction; b) using said first computer to create a grammar based on said first set of input data; c) providing the grammar to a second computer, wherein said second computer is operable to control an interactive voice response system; d) completing a plurality of interactions using the interactive voice response system, wherein, in each of the interactions, at least one statement made by the interactive voice response system is determined based on the grammar; e) creating a plurality of records, wherein each record from the plurality of records corresponds to a single interaction from the plurality of interactions; f) sending said plurality of records to said first computer as an additional set of input data; and g) using the first computer, revising the grammar based on the additional set of input data; wherein; i) the first set of input data comprises a set of website data corresponding to a website; ii) the second computer is operable to use the grammar to control the interactive voice response system such that the interactive voice response system is operable to engage in interactions which do not follow the structure of the website; iii) steps (c)-(g) are performed at least one time to create a revised grammar; iv) the revised grammar comprises a plurality of sub-grammars organized according to a hierarchy comprising a plurality of levels wherein; 1) a sub-grammar from the lowest level from the plurality of levels comprises a vocabulary comprising words; and 2) for each level above the lowest level in the hierarchy, a grammar from that level comprises elements provided by a grammar from the next lower level in the hierarchy; v) the revised grammar is created based on the following sets of input data; 1) the first set of input data; 2) a second set of input data; and 3) a third set of input data; and vi) the statements 1) |A∪
B|−
|A∩
B|≠
0; and2) B∪
C=A∪
C;are true where A is the set of levels from the hierarchy in which at least one sub-grammar is revised based on the first set of input data, B is the set of levels from the hierarchy in which at least one sub-grammar is revised based on the second set of input data, and C is the set of levels from the hierarchy in which at least one sub-grammar is revised based on the third set of input data. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A computer readable medium having stored thereon a set of data operable to configure a computer to:
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a) identify a plurality of relevant phrases in a website, wherein said plurality of relevant phrases comprises a first phrase from a first page from said website and a second phrase from a second page from said website; b) determine a plurality of weights wherein each weight from said plurality of weights corresponds to a relevant phrase from said plurality of relevant phrases and is based at least in part on a relationship between the corresponding relevant phrase and a leaf page from the website; c) using a set of information comprising said plurality of weights and said plurality of relevant phrases, train a grammar to categorize an input according to a class corresponding to the leaf page from the website; and d) store said grammar in a computer memory in a format readable by an interactive voice response system; wherein at least one relevant phrase from the plurality of relevant phrases is a phrase in an ancestor page separated from the leaf page by a number of links, and wherein the relationship between the at least one relevant phrase from the ancestor page comprises the number of links separating the ancestor page from the leaf page. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15)
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Specification