Method for Determining the On-Hold Status in a Call

1. A system for detecting a hold status in a transaction between a waiting party and a queuing party, the system comprising: a cue profile database containing at least one cue profile for at least one queuing party, the at least one cue profile including on-hold cues and transition audio cues of the queuing party; and a processor adapted to detect a hold status at least partially based on the at least one cue profile of the queuing party, wherein the system is independent of the queuing party.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the cue profile of the queuing party comprises at least one of audio cues, cue metadata and text cues.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the transaction is at least one of a telephone based, mobile-phone based, and internet based transaction.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein at least part of the cue profile is provided by the queuing party.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the processor comprises, in combination, at least one of an audio processing system, a speech recognition engine, an audio pattern matching component and a cue processor component.

6. The system of claim 5 , further comprising an audio playback component for playing pre-recorded audio used to perform a verbal challenge to detect a live person.

7. The system of claim 1 , further comprising means to update the cue profile database after at least one of a certain period and a change in the cue profile.

8. The system of claim 1 , further comprising means to use a verbal challenge to determine the hold status.

9. A method for detecting a hold status in a transaction between a waiting party and a queuing party, the method comprising: using a cue profile database containing at least one cue profile for at least one queuing party, the cue profile containing on-hold cues and transition audio cues; and detecting, by a processor, the hold status at least partially based on the cue profile, wherein the method is independent of the queuing party.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the cue profile of the queuing party comprises at least one of audio cues, cue metadata and text cues.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein the transaction is at least one of a telephone based, mobile-phone based, and internet based transaction.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein at least part of the cue profile is provided by the queuing party.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein the method comprises, in combination, at least one of audio processing, speech recognition, audio pattern matching, and cue processing.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising playing pre-recorded audio used to perform a verbal challenge to detect a live person.

15. The method of claim 9 , wherein the method updates the cue profile database after at least one of a certain period and a change in the cue profile.

16. The method of claim 9 , wherein the method uses a verbal challenge to determine the hold status.