System-initiated digressive proposals in automated human-computer telephone dialogues: the use of contrasting politeness strategies

System-initiated digressive proposals may be used to introduce new and unexpected information into automated telephone services. These digressions may be viewed as particularly pronounced forms of unsolicited interruptions as they contain information not directly related to the caller’s intended activity. In human–human conversation, interruptions are considered to be speech acts which intrinsically threaten both the positive and negative face wants of the addressee and conversants adopt specific verbal strategies to mitigate the negative impact of their interruptions. A question therefore arises whether the introduction of faceredressive expressions, based on human–human conversational strategies, into the design of system-initiated proposals in automated services can mitigate the negative impact of the interruptions. A usability experiment was conducted to examine the effectiveness of three contrasting politeness strategies for system-initiated digressions in a mass-market telephone banking dialogue using speech recognition technology. Participants (N=111) experienced these proposals while using the automated service to perform banking tasks. Results indicated see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. .ijhcs.2004.08.001 nding author. Tel.: +44-131-6502801; fax: +44-131-6502784. dress: [email protected] (J. Wilkie).