# US 10,311,895 B2 · Assessing the structural quality of conversations

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- Number: US 10,311,895 B2
- Document ID: US10311895B2
- Status: Granted
- Kind: B2
- Application number: 15/997,967
- Filed: 2018-06-05
- Published: 2019-03-28
- Granted: 2019-06-04
- Earliest claimed: 2017-09-26
- Assignees: International Business Machines Corporation
- Applicants: International Business Machines Corporation
- Inventors: Rama Kalyani T. Akkiraju; Jalal Mahmud; Vibha S. Sinha; Anbang Xu; Pritam S. Gundecha; MD Mansurul A. Bhuiyan; Shereen M. Oraby
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US10311895B2

## CPC

- G10L 25/63: for estimating an emotional state
- G06F 16/24578: {using ranking}
- G06F 16/634: {Query by example, e.g. query by humming}
- G06Q 10/06316: {Sequencing of tasks or work}
- G10L 15/22: Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
- H04M 3/2236: {Quality of speech transmission monitoring}
- H04M 3/4936: {Speech interaction details (speech recognition per se G10L15/00)}
- G10L 2015/227: {of the speaker; Human-factor methodology}
- H04M 2203/2038: Call context notifications
- H04M 2203/552: Call annotations
- H04M 2203/558: Databases
- G10L: SPEECH ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES OR SPEECH SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
- G06F: ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING (computer systems based on specific computational models G06N)
- G06Q: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
- H04M: TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION (circuits for controlling other apparatus via a telephone cable and not involving telephone switching apparatus G08)

## Abstract

Input of a conversation is received. The conversation includes at least a first user. An utterance of the conversation is analyzed to identify a dialog act attribute, an emotion attribute, and a tone attribute. The dialog act attribute, emotion attribute, and tone attribute are annotated to the utterance of the conversation. The conversation is validated based on the annotated attributes compared with a threshold. The annotated conversation and the validation of the conversation are stored.

## Claims

### Claim 1

A computer program product comprising:
one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising:
program instructions to receive an input of a conversation, in real time, between at least a first user and an automated response system, wherein the automated response system comprises an application that performs an automated task;
program instructions to analyze an utterance of the conversation to identify a dialog act attribute, an emotion attribute, and a tone attribute;
program instructions to annotate the utterance of the conversation with the dialog act attribute, the emotion attribute, and the tone attribute;
program instructions to validate the conversation based on the annotated attributes in comparison with a threshold, wherein program instructions to validate the conversation comprise:
program instructions to compare each annotated utterance in the conversation to a known database of best practice annotated conversations;
program instructions to determine a number of violations and a type of each violation using an algorithm selected from the group consisting of: a sequence alignment algorithm, an information retrieval method, a sequence-to-one model, and a weighted edit distance;
program instructions to score each annotated utterance based on the number of violations, based on the comparison of each annotated utterance to the known database of best practice annotated conversations;
program instructions to rank each utterance based on the scoring; and
program instructions to suggest a response for a second user to make to the first user based on each ranked utterance;
program instructions to store the annotated conversation and the validation of the conversation;
program instructions to determine that the validation of the conversation indicates that the conversation has not met the threshold;
program instructions to transfer the first user to a second user;
program instructions to retrieve a plurality of stored annotated conversations;
program instructions to analyze the plurality of stored annotated conversations, wherein the analysis determines a number of violations found in each annotated conversation;
program instructions to rank each annotated conversation in the plurality of stored annotated conversations based on the analysis; and
program instructions to send at least one recommendation to a third user for improving at least one annotated conversation in the plurality of stored annotated conversations, wherein the at least one recommendation includes a change to a pre-defined dialog.