A method for collecting data associated with the voice of a voice system use r includes conducting a conversation with the user, capturing and digitizing a speech waveform of the user, extracting at least one acoustic feature from the digitized speech waveform and storing attribute data corresponding to the acoustic feature, together with an identifying indicia, in the data warehouse in a form to facilitate subsequent data mining. User attributes can include gender, age, accent, native language, dialect, socioeconomic classification, educational level and emotional state. Data gathering can be repeated for a large number of users, until sufficient data is present. The attribute data to be stored can include raw acoustic features, or processed features, such as the user's emotional state, age, gender, socioeconomic group, and the like. In an alternative form of method, the user attribute can be used to real-time modify behavior of the voice system, with or without storage of data for subsequent data mining. An apparatus for collecting data associated with a voice of a user includes a dialog management unit, an audio capture module, an acoustic front end, a processing module and a data warehouse. The acoustic front end receives and digitizes a speech waveform from the user and extracts at least one acoustic feature from the digitized speech waveform. The feature is correlated with at least one user attribute. The processing module analyzes the acoustic feature to determine the user attribute, which can then be stor ed in the data warehouse. The dialog management unit can include, for example, a telephone interactive voice response system. The processor can be an application specific circuit, a separate general purpose computer with appropriate software, or a processor portion of the IVR. The processing module can include an emotional state classifier, a speaker clusterer and classifier, a speech recognizer, and/or an accent identifier. Alternatively, the apparatus can be configured as a real-time- modifiable voice system for interaction with a user, which can be used to practice the method for tailoring a voice system response.
CONVERSATIONAL DATA MINING