11. A system for determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call comprising: an automated telephone calling device for placing a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed; and a speaker-independent speech recognition device which, upon said telephone call being answered, initiates a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, receives a spoken response from an answering person and performs a speech recognition analysis on said spoken response to determine the meaning of said spoken response; wherein, if said speaker-independent speech recognition device determines that said answering person is said target person, said speaker-independent speech recognition device initiates a speaker-independent speech recognition application with said target person, wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition application is an interactive speech application configured and arranged to provide a series of acoustic prompts to the answering person by telephonic interaction, and wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition system is configured to provide at least one of the following conditional responses based on the meaning of the spoken response as determined by the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis in accordance with a set of speaker-independent speech recognition enabled states of conversation including one or more of (1) the answering person indicates that he or she is the target person, (2) the answering person indicates that he or she is not the target person, (3) the answering person indicates that the target person is not present at the location, (4) the answering person indicates a hold request, (5) the answering person requests the identity of the caller, (6) the answering person indicates that the telephone number is not the correct number for the target person, and (7) the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis cannot determine the meaning of the spoken response from the answering person: a. if said speech recognition analysis determines that said spoken response is a request for the identity of the entity responsible for the calling system, initiating a prerecorded response indicating the identity of the calling party, repeating said prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, and repeating step C through step E; and b. if said speech recognition analysis cannot determine a status of said spoken response, repeating said prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, and repeating step C through step E.
11. A system for determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call comprising: an automated telephone calling device for placing a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed; and a speaker-independent speech recognition device which, upon said telephone call being answered, initiates a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, receives a spoken response from an answering person and performs a speech recognition analysis on said spoken response to determine the meaning of said spoken response; wherein, if said speaker-independent speech recognition device determines that said answering person is said target person, said speaker-independent speech recognition device initiates a speaker-independent speech recognition application with said target person, wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition application is an interactive speech application configured and arranged to provide a series of acoustic prompts to the answering person by telephonic interaction, and wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition system is configured to provide at least one of the following conditional responses based on the meaning of the spoken response as determined by the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis in accordance with a set of speaker-independent speech recognition enabled states of conversation including one or more of (1) the answering person indicates that he or she is the target person, (2) the answering person indicates that he or she is not the target person, (3) the answering person indicates that the target person is not present at the location, (4) the answering person indicates a hold request, (5) the answering person requests the identity of the caller, (6) the answering person indicates that the telephone number is not the correct number for the target person, and (7) the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis cannot determine the meaning of the spoken response from the answering person: a. if said speech recognition analysis determines that said spoken response is a request for the identity of the entity responsible for the calling system, initiating a prerecorded response indicating the identity of the calling party, repeating said prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, and repeating step C through step E; and b. if said speech recognition analysis cannot determine a status of said spoken response, repeating said prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, and repeating step C through step E. 18. The system of claim 11 wherein, if said speech recognition device determines that said spoken response indicates that said telephone number is not the correct number for the target person, said speech recognition system instructs said automated telephone calling device to initiate a prerecorded apology message and to terminate said telephone call.