ON-LINE TRAINING OF AN AUTOMATED-DIALING DIRECTORY

Directory assistance (106) is used to train a voice-dialing system (107) as a part of normal voice-dialing activities, thereby avoiding the need for a separate training session. The voice-dialing system connects a caller to directory assistance when a voice-dialing attempt by the caller does not match any voice tags in the caller's voice-dialing directory (130) and the caller signals a desire to use directory assistance. The voice-dialing system monitors the call to directory assistance, and captures and stores the telephone number provided by directory assistance to the caller. After the directory assistance call is completed, the voice-dialing system asks the caller to repeat the voice tag for the telephone number, forms a data representation of the voice tag from multiple received instances of the voice tag, records the data representation of the voice tag along with the captured telephone number in the caller's voice-dialing directory, and at the caller's option initiates a call to the telephone number. As a result, future calls to this telephone number can be made via voice dialing, and without use of directory assistance.