How to configure speech recognition

Configure speech recognition for agents to accept callbacks.

Speech-recognition features allow you to accept spoken input from agents in the Mindful IVR. With this feature, agents can use speech input to confirm they are ready to accept a callback. This article provides step-by-step instructions to configure speech recognition for agents.

When Mindful needs to prompt an agent to indicate they are ready to accept a callback, the recommended approach is to use the API to invoke an agent answer event, or you can instruct agents to press 1 when ready. As an alternative, you can configure your Call Targets to detect and recognize agent speech instead.

On the Call Target page, the Agent Answer Recognition radio button determines what is required from agents to indicate they are ready to accept a callback.

  • When "DTMF" is selected, agents will be prompted to press 1 to accept a callback.

  • When "Voice" is selected, agents will hear a customizable audio prompt instructing them to say specific words or phrases to accept.

You can define keywords, set a required confidence level, or optionally choose to accept any speech that is recognized rather than listening for keywords.

Screen capture of a Call Target's details with the Agent Answer Recognition section highlighted
Note:

  • The Agent Answer Recognition feature must be enabled by Mindful staff prior to use. Otherwise, the toggle switch and its related settings will not be accessible.

  • This setting is only available when First Party Called is set to "Customer" and Wait for live Agent is selected. Voice detection is not available for Agent First callbacks.

  • This feature only detects speech in the English language at this time.

  • When the Priority Queue Timeout is set to "Infinite", Agent Answer Recognition cannot be set to "Voice". An error message will appear if you attempt to enable voice recognition with an unlimited timeout. This ensures that a timeout is always in place if a technical issue prevents agent voice recognition.

Important: It is possible to automate the process of agents accepting calls by automatically playing an audio prompt (containing voice or DTMF) from the agent side when an agent connects to a call. We recommend the following best practices to ensure the audio prompt is recognized by Mindful (especially in Avaya environments):

  • Record the audio file in a soundproof environment, such as a sound booth, to avoid background chatter.

  • Include one second or more of leading silence in the audio file.

  • If you are using DTMF, note that the audio quality is more important than the volume of the tone. Mindful has a DTMF tone audio file available to assist with DTMF recognition.

Configure a Call Target to use speech recognition

Use the steps below to configure agent speech recognition

Note: If you plan to allow any speech recognition rather than configuring a list of keywords, you can skip these steps.

  1. On the Call Target page, select "Voice" for the Agent Answer Recognition setting.

  2. To add new keywords or phrases, type a word or phrase into the Recognition Keywords field. Press Enter when finished to add the word or phrase to the list.

    example recognition keywords

    Only one word or phrase can be added at a time, but you can continue to add words and phrases in the text field to expand the list.

  3. To remove keywords, click the X icon next to any keyword in the list.

  4. Set a required confidence level.

    With the Confidence Level setting, you can set a threshold (as a percentage) for positively identifying that an agent has spoken a keyword. A default value of 80 is used unless you specify otherwise. This means that the speech recognition engine must reach 80% confidence that a keyword has been spoken before it identifies a match.

    To loosen the confidence requirement and positively identify agent speech more often, enter a value lower than the default of 80. To tighten the confidence requirement for more precision, enter a value higher than the default of 80.

(Optional) Allow any speech recognition

You can use the Allow any Speech Recognition check box to instruct the speech recognition engine to ignore the configured Recognition Keywords and simply recognize any speech from agents. When selected, agents can respond with any speech when prompted to connect to a caller.Screen capture of the Agent Answer Recognition section with the Allow any Speech Recognition option un-selected

Tip: If you enable the Allow any Speech Recognition setting, consider updating the Prompt Agent to Connect (Voice) audio prompt to advise agents that they can respond with any speech to connect to a customer. By default, the audio file plays "To connect to the caller, say 'Connect'."

(Recommended) Update the agent voice prompt for added keywords

When Agent Answer Detection is set to "Voice", the Prompt Agent to Connect (Voice) audio prompt will be played to agents who answer a callback. This prompt plays "To connect to the caller, say 'Connect'" by default.

If you add or remove recognition keywords from the list, we recommend updating the Prompt Agent to Connect (Voice) audio prompt to advise agents of the complete list of recognizable words or phrases.

For example, if you added the word "Ready" to the list of recognition keywords, you might update the audio prompt to say "To connect to the caller, say 'Connect' or 'Ready'."

Screen capture of a Media Set's details, focusing on the Connecting Agent section

For complete instructions on updating audio prompts, see How to manage audio files.