Automated message prioritization: Making voicemail retrieval more efficient

Abstract

Navigating through new voicemail messages to find messages of interest is a time-consuming task, particularly for high-volume users. When checking messages under a time constraint (e.g., during a brief meeting break), users need to identify those messages requiring urgent action since not all messages can be processed in limited time. For these users, it would be useful if messages of greater urgency could be played first. For other users, distinguishing personal from business voicemail is a pressing need, to separate their home and business lives. We have successfully applied machine-learning techniques to lexical, acoustic, and contextual features of voicemail in order to sort messages based on urgency and on business-relevance.