Interactive voice response system providing visual representation of caller's intent

A system for providing a live agent with information on a telephone call being forwarded to the live agent, the system comprising:

• an interactive voice response (IVR) mechanism responsive to a telephone call placed by a caller to provide an audible or visual request signal transferred to the caller,
• a speech recognition mechanism responsive to a caller's voice response to the request signal so as to produce a data signal representing a recognized voice response determined based on the caller's voice response, and
• a computer telephony integration (CTI) unit for forwarding to the live agent the telephone call from the caller, concurrently with forwarding the data signal representing the recognized voice response, to a terminal for display to the live agent,
• the IVR mechanism being configured to forward the caller's voice response to the speech recognition mechanism, to receive from the speech recognition mechanism the data signal representing the recognized voice response, and to control the CTI unit to forward the telephone call together with the data signal.