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Effects of Prompt Style on User Responses to an Automated Banking Service Using Word-Spotting

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BT Technology Journal

Abstract

Two experiments were performed to measure the effects of differing styles of prompt wording in a simulated telephone banking service incorporating a speech recogniser with word-spotting capabilities. It was found that users gave longer input utterances in response to an 'open' style of prompt ('How can I help you?') than in response to a 'closed' prompt which was more specific as to what input was expected, and that when a help facility was offered most users said 'help' straight away. However, no significant difference was found in attitudes to the different versions of the service. Also no attitude difference was found with varying recognition accuracy. This may have been partly due to inadequate vocabulary coverage obscuring the effect of accuracy within the vocabulary, but the results suggest also that small numbers of recognition errors may have little impact on user attitude provided that the intended result of the call is achieved — this is a topic where further research could be valuable.

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Authors
  1. F. R. McInnes
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  2. I. A. Nairn
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  3. D. J. Attwater
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  4. M. A. Jack
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McInnes, F.R., Nairn, I.A., Attwater, D.J. et al. Effects of Prompt Style on User Responses to an Automated Banking Service Using Word-Spotting. BT Technology Journal 17, 160–171 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009643412715

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009643412715

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