FIELD

Embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods for conversing with a user, and systems and methods for determining a character sequence.

BACKGROUND

Conversational systems such as voice-based agents are used in many applications such as voice-based search, recommendation, booking, telephone help systems, customer service, and e-banking amongst others. For example, customer support services and call centres may be automated though voice-based, self-service Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems.

Many conversational systems, such as IVR systems, include a step of identifying and authenticating or verifying users or use cases, before establishing and granting access to services and private data. The identification and authentication may depend on the extraction of a character sequence from the user. Many such systems additionally or alternatively include a step of capturing one or more character sequences as part of the dialogue, for example a step of recording an address including a post code may be included. Examples of character sequences are: postcodes, phone numbers, reference codes and numbers for flights, bookings, insurance policies, package tracking, utilities and governmental services, amongst others. There is a continuing need to improve the determination of such character sequences from input speech.

