1. A method of determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call comprising: A. placing, with an automated calling system, a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed; B. upon said telephone call being answered, as determined by an initial response, initiating a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person; C. receiving said initial response and determining if said initial response is being provided by an answering machine, wherein said step of determining if said initial response is being provided by an answering machine includes distinguishing between a live person and a machine according to whether the initial response is longer than a predetermined time or whether a beep tone is detected; D. upon determining that the initial response is not provide by an answering machine and that the initial response is a spoken response, performing a speaker-independent speech recognition analysis on said spoken response, wherein performing said speaker-independent speech recognition analysis includes initiating a speaker-independent speech recognition application with said target person, wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition application is an interactive speech application operative to provide a series of acoustic prompts to the answering person by telephonic interaction, to determine the meaning of said spoken response, and wherein the speech recognition analysis comprises using a Web access application, an educational application, a learning and lesson application, or a compliance application; and E. providing conditional responses based on the meaning of the subsequent spoken response as determined by the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis in accordance with one or more speaker-independent speech recognition enabled states of conversation.