Hello, Hal.(talking computers)

Not long ago, a caller dialled the toll-free number of an energy company to inquire about his bill. He reached an interactive-voice-response system, or I.V.R.--the automated service you get whenever you dial a utility or an airline or any other big American company. I.V.R.s are the speaking tube that connects corporate America to its clients. Companies profess boundless interest in their customers, but they don't want to pay an employee to talk to a caller if they can avoid it; the average human-to-human call costs the company at least five dollars. Once an I.V.R. has been paid for, however, a human-to-I.V.R. call costs virtually nothing.

"If you have an emergency, press one," the utility company's I.V.R. said. "To use our automated services or to pay by phone, press two."

The caller punched two, and was instructed to enter his account number, which he did. An alert had been placed on the account because of a missed payment. "Please hold," the I.V.R. said. "Your call is being transferred to a service representative." This statement was followed by one of the most commonly heard sentences in the English language: "Your call may be monitored."

In fact, the call was being monitored, and I listened to it some months later, in the offices of B.B.N. Technologies, a sixty-year-old company, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Joe Alwan, a vice-president and the general manager of the division that makes B.B.N.'s "callerexperience analytics" software, which is called Avoke, was showing me how the technology can automatically create a log of events in a call, render the speech as text, and make it searchable.

Alwan, a compact man with scrunchedtogether features who has been at B.B.N. for two years, spoke rapidly but smoothly, with a droll delivery. He projected a graphic of the voice onto a screen at one end of the room. "Anger's the big one," he said. Companies can use Avoke to determine when their callers are getting angry, so that they can improve their I.V.R.s.

The agent came on the line, said his name was Eric, and asked the caller to explain his problem. Eric had a slight Indian accent and spoke in a high, clear voice. He probably worked at a call center in Bangalore for a few dollars an hour, although his pay was likely based on how efficiently he could process the calls. "The company doesn't want to spend more money on the call, because it's a cost," Alwan said. The caller's voice gave the impression that he was white (particularly the way he pronounced the "u" in "duuude") and youthful, around thirty:

CALLER: Hey, what's going on is, ah, I got a return-payment notice, right?, AGENT: Mhm., CALLER: And I checked with my bank, and my bank was saying, well, it didn't even get to you . . . they didn't reject it. So then I was just, like, what's the issue, and then, ah, you guys charge to pay over the phone, so that's why it's not done over the phone, so that's why I do it on the Internet, so--, AGENT: O.K., CALLER: So I don't . . . know what's going on.