Can Machines Call People?- User Experience While Answering Telephone Calls Initiated by Machine

摘要

Current state-of-the-art spoken dialog systems are aimed at handling telephone calls to automate incoming caller requests. In this paper we explore a scenario which is symmetric to a traditional human-initiated interaction. We report on an initial qualitative study focusing on the opposite type of interaction, i.e. when automated agents place telephone calls to recipients that request interactive dialog from the recipients. The study consisted of 16 telephone calls to participants placed by a simulated agent, followed by debriefing interviews with the participants. The data gained in the study were analyzed to identify factors that influence the acceptance of such calls.