Method of and system for improving accuracy in a speech recognition system

A method of transcribing an audio response comprising:

• A. posing a query over a telephone to a telephone respondent;
• B. receiving an audio response from said respondent over the telephone;
• C. performing a speaker-independent speech recognition function on said audio response to automatically convert said audio response to a textual response;
• D. recording said audio response;
• E. comparing said textual response to a set of expected responses to said query, said set including a plurality of expected responses to said query in a textual form;
• and
• F. flagging said audio response so as to produce a flagged audio response for further review by a human operator if the corresponding textual response does not correspond to one of said expected responses in said set of expected responses within a predetermined accuracy confidence parameter;
• G. a human operator listening to the actual audio response corresponding to said flagged audio response, wherein the human operator is different than the telephone respondent;
• and
• H. a human operator determining if one of said expected responses corresponds to said actual audio response, wherein the human operator is different than the telephone respondent;
• and
• I. if such determination of step H. is in the affirmative, selecting, from said set of expected responses, a textual response that corresponds to said audio response.

A method of transcribing an audio response comprising:

• A. constructing a speaker-independent speech recognition application including a plurality of queries and a set of expected responses for each query, said set including a plurality of expected responses to each query in a textual form;
• B. posing each of said queries to a telephone respondent over the telephone;
• C. receiving an audio response to each query over the telephone from said respondent;
• D. performing a speaker-independent speech recognition function on each said audio response to automatically convert each said audio response to a textual response to each query;
• E. recording and storing each audio response;
• F. automatically comparing each textual response to said set of expected responses for each corresponding query to determine if each textual response corresponds to any of said expected responses in said set of expected responses for the corresponding query;
• G. flagging an audio response so as to produce a flagged audio response for further review by a human operator if the corresponding textual response does not correspond to one of said expected responses in said set of expected responses within a predetermined accuracy confidence parameter as determined by said speaker-independent speech recognition analysis, H. a human operator listening to the actual audio response corresponding to said flagged audio response, wherein the human operator is different than the telephone respondent;
• I. a human operator determining if one of said expected responses corresponds to said actual audio response, wherein the human operator is different than the telephone respondent;
• and
• J. if such determination of step I. is in the affirmative, the human operator selecting, from said set of expected responses, a textual response that corresponds to said audio response, and flagging each audio response that does not correspond to one of said expected responses in said set of expected responses to the corresponding query.