Control of voice mail systems by voice commands

A spoken dialogue between a user and a computer system has to be governed by the system because of (i) the limited capabilities of present word- recognition apparatus and (ii) the limited possibilities of the system for 'understanding' its user. The user' s part of the dialogue therefore needs to be unobtrusively controlled by the system by carefully phrased and timed prompts. Short pauses in these prompts enable the experienced user to make shortcuts through the dialogue, without forsaking complete explanations for the unexperienced user. The user is also able to control the system by utilizing other pauses in the system utterances for corrective words or protests in case of incorrect recognition .