Method and system for an automated departure strategy

A computer program product comprising computer executable instructions, stored on a computer accessible medium, for providing automated directory assistance, said instructions comprising instructions for:

• initiating a directory assistance dialog with a user;
• prompting the user for a user utterance;
• detecting a keyword in the user utterance;
• querying a directory assistance database based at least in part on the keyword;
• responsive to said querying retrieving multiple records from the database, determining hierarchical levels associated with the retrieved records;
• and
• disambiguating the retrieved records based at least in part on the hierarchical levels including disambiguating a subset of the retrieved records, wherein the retrieved records in the subset share a common hierarchical level.

A system including a processor and storage, the storage including processor executable instructions, embedded in the storage, for providing automated directory assistance, said instructions comprising instructions for:

• initiating a directory assistance dialog with a user;
• prompting the user for a directory assistance user utterance;
• detecting the user utterance in response to the prompt;
• identifying one or more directory assistance search terms from the user utterance;
• querying a database based on the identified search terms;
• responsive to said querying retrieving multiple records from the database, determining hierarchical levels associated with the retrieved records;
• and
• disambiguating the multiple records based at least in part on the hierarchical levels including disambiguating among a plurality of the retrieved records associated with a first hierarchical level to select a first record, and, responsive to detecting a plurality of retrieved records being child records to the selected first record, disambiguating among the child records to identify a selected child record.